Awani App Revamp – Making Malaysia’s best news app better!

Awani is recognized as the most trusted Malaysian source of news by the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018 & 2019,

The Awani app has been around since 2013, and in 6 years , we haven’t enhanced any of the UX/UI of the Awani app but we have added tons of content into our digital platform. Content is the king as we know it, but having an app that is user friendly, harmonic, intuitive and up to date is the key to find those fabulous content and consume it.

Goal and Objective

Our goal was not only to provide an amazing user experience to avid news fans in Malaysia, but also we had to find a way to save costs and monetize the app to increase our digital revenue.

This project gave the project team such a great practice of searching for efficient solutions so that the application obtained a high level of utility and usability for all the categories of users.

The goals:

• Be the number one news site in Malaysia in terms of content and traffic

• Create new monetisation opportunities to create a conductive commercial environment for advertisers.

• Enhance user experience so that user can browse and read more news easily thus increase app time spent and usage

• Drive down cost significantly, create a scale to develop features across properties, and reduce time and cost.

Research

Research has always been a part of the key fundamentals before starting any development. Well, you have to build something that user’s out there will need and use.

To discover consumer needs in digital news consumption we staked out in coffee shops and interviewed 100 people to create a persona. A persona to win them all.

We found out a thing or two about Malaysian newsreaders. Daily newsreaders like to read the news so that they can have informed conversations with their friends, , and business partners. They want to be kept aware of what’s happening in Malaysia and around the world.

A smaller sample was more into lifestyle and entertainment related news which are interactive and fun. They prefer summarised news than reading long articles.

We researched all major news apps, responsive websites, and progressive web apps aggressively. We even dreamed about it at certain points. Well, that was the amount of dedication we had, and still have. At the same time, we analysed the content of the current site and find gaps with competitors.

Key Findings

• Complicated top navigation area. Too much information for users to focus on.

• Unclear visual structure, large area of text with no visual aids, difficult for users to scan through.

• No obvious visual contrast for headers and text. Difficult for users to scan through headlines.

Based on our findings the focus was more on the content delivery formats instead of the real content. Specific recommendations were advised.

• The headline will take on a couple of new formats. The headline will be limited to well-crafted characters, with the right font and details.

• Pump up user engagement. Recommendations engine for readers so that they can explore, navigate, and spend more time on the app.

• People will always be interrupted when they use the app or site. How can we take this drawback to ensure continuity? Features like bookmarks, following topics, correct hashtags, push notifications were introduced more efficiently.

The Build in scale, both design and development, here is where we worked our charm both from the UI/UX & Software Engineering team. We are believers of sustainability and scalability.

All digital products are expected to grow and evolve, it is part of any product lifecycle. For each product iteration: new features are going to be implemented, new user segments are going to be targeted, marketing campaigns experimented, and the list goes on and on. This means to have a scalable design framework will help drive usability, feature expandability, ultimately to enable a product to grow.

Most of our content app was built to caters to articles and videos which was our major consumed content. This was also available to be used for other Products, ultimately reducing cost and time at the same time to remain the quality and performance of the product. We always have one eye on the future, and another on our finances.

UX/UI team has created the basic framework from scratch to make sure it can be catered for Awani’s use case and other products such as Syok!, our radio & entertainment app. The software engineering team worked carefully to refine the codes to make sure most of the component can resume across different products and also make sure the performance of the product to meet the market benchmark.

Learnings

• Involving stakeholders from the client to participate in the design process to ensure all parties are aligned in the same direction and save time on the approval process.

• Focusing on goals instead of features will help the team to prioritise.

Our new features

• LIVE TV: Never miss the latest coverage wherever you are as it breaks via our live streaming function. Watch it all here on-the-go including our linear channel offering.

• NOTIFICATIONS: Be the first to know. We will notify you when the news breaks!

• TRENDING NOW: Be in the know and aligned on the latest trending topics, popular stories, and hot issues sorted in real-time.

• INFO SOLAT: Customisable notifications for Solat times throughout the day and reference for the Qiblat direction

• PODCAST: Missed it on TV? Stay updated via audio on the top stories, discussions, press conferences, and signature programmes curated specially for you on the move.

• UNLIMITED VIDEOS: Catching up on videos has never been this smooth. Watch it all for FREE without limit.

• SAVE & SHARE: Come back to read your chosen article at your leisure and share it with your close ones easily

The New Awani App was launched successfully in Nov 2019.

How did we measure? The numbers speak for themselves!

Feedback from users

“This update is so much better than the previous one. The search and filter function is useful. The design is clean. I can even turn off autoplay for video now. The experience was good overall.”

“With the search and filter function, so much easier to look for what I want to read and watch. And, also with the new interface, it is also much friendly that the previous version.”

“Has been using the app since the launch and the new design is totally awesome. The app looks more clear and info presented is what I want. Keep up the good work hope can see more features in the future.”

“Very impressed with the new layout. As the go to source for localized news , I’m glad it finally caught up with a much more refreshing display of news. Will definitely continue to consume the app. Great work Awani!”

Here is something extra. Sneak peek into the near future. Stay tuned!

• Breaking News & Hero Story – To highlight key topics/articles. Certain topics / articles / headlines garner more traffic. With this feature, we can pin them to the most top.

• Full English Content – To cater and cover a bigger audience pool.

• Advertisement Enhancement – To improve User Experience with regards to advertisement placements and frequency and help generate revenue for Astro’s Digital sales.

• Awani Live Audio – To allow users to listen to live news without streaming the video. We are turning our news into a audio format to engage more users.

And lastly but not least a shout out the team that made it happen and still working on making it the best news app out there.

Product Team : Shuk Wai, Aaron, CK & Yvonne

UI/UX Team : Christine, Ethan,

SE Team :Frontend - Jeffery, Aldy, Huteri, Ankur, Ecko, Thava , Jia Wei (TAP)

Backend - Sumit, Sahil, Rahul, Jin – Backend