The 'CMD Sessions' represent a collaborative three-week design project for a client. The client for this project was Hackastory: a company that aims to help international organizations in media and journalism with developing digital stories, audience engagement and creating more impact with their core business: telling stories (www.hackastory.com/about-hackastory/).
The challenge for this project was about innovation in journalism, drawing from the observation that journalism has remained unchanged over the past decade whilst trust in media and journalism from the point of view of the target audience is something that has changed. Offering news from an ample variety of viewpoints is currently insufficient, resulting in the emergence of a distorted image of the news. How can we innovate journalism and media to rectify this distorted image? An iterative three-week design project with a tested prototype as the result of each week eventually resulted in CROSS: a mobile application that allows the user to gain knowledge on a newsworthy event from every possible perspective.
A journalist that writes for 'de Volkskrant' may report on the news from a very different viewpoint compared to a journalist that writes for 'het NRC Handelsblad'. It is not the intention of CROSS to make the user digest the news in a more broadly oriented manner, but rather to raise awareness on the political colour attached to the sources from which the user is drawing information. We are not saying that it is necessarily bad to only read news articles that match your own political viewpoint, we are saying that it would be a good thing if people are aware of the 'filter bubble' that they may find themselves in, whilst sticking to these news articles. In addition, CROSS does offer an 'easy way out' of this filter bubble, by structurally making reports from other news outlets on the same newsworthy events readily available and easily accessible.
This project was concluded with the given chance to present CROSS to a group of journalists and creatives during a Hackaton at the KRO in Hilversum, The Netherlands.
AFFILIATION
Bachelor Communication- and Multimedia Design (Avans Hogeschool)
ACTIVITY
Client project (Hackastory)
COURSE NAME
CMD Sessions
CLIENT
Hackastory
COACH
Joep Gerrits (Avans)
Albertine Piels (Hackastory)
PERIOD
S2 (2016/2017)
TEAM
Martin Klomp, Twan de Bruijn, Luke van Eersel
KEYWORDS
Digital Design, Agile, Iterative Design, User Testing, Business & Entrepreneurship, Journalism, Filter Bubble
GRADE
8/10
An official intended learning outcome for this project was to gain experience with working on a budget and working for a client. At this point in time, Hackastory was yet a start-up company that was able to only provide a hypothetical budget of €5000 in total. Considering four people working full-time on this project for three weeks straight, not even taking into account necessary outsourcing costs, this budget was very tight. It made me realize how much cost-dependent aspects would be involved and need to be taken into careful consideration when (still hypothetically) designing in 'the real world' as opposed to simply 'doing a school project'. This was truly an enlightening experience that resulted in a firm but necessary reality-check.
On the other hand, from a collaborative point of view - both within the project group as between the project group and the client - this has been one of the most fluent, well-oiled, efficient and fun projects in my study career, as the whole actually became greater than the sum of its parts. With clear briefings, transparent communication, well-structured weekly schedules, a well-adjusted division of tasks and a well-balanced sense of motivation and responsibility, this project was deemed a great success.
