Ground News reached out to Pragmatics to help transition the best features from their mobile app to an all-new web experience.We worked closely with their team to release several iterations of the web app, and over time helped them develop a variety of tools their users loved including a browser extension, election trackers, and the
Blindspotter—a viral sensation on Twitter.Ground News lets news readers compare how a story is covered by thousands of sources across the political spectrum. It has helped over 250,000 readers escape their echo chambers and see the news from a different perspective. Ground News was created to be a news destination for everyone, regardless of political ideology.
Our team was integrated into the technical and marketing groups at Ground News. We developed an agile approach to understanding the users needs by diving into the company’s analytics, leveraging interactions with customers on social media, and in-depth interviews with subscribers.
This unlocked a key insight that sparked our redesign: provide Ground News users with more context and overviews as well as information about their social networks, to put the news in perspective. We streamlined the existing pages to highlight the most pertinent information and developed unique tools for social media and web browsers so that Ground News was less of a destination and more of an omnipresent news companion.
Through a process of careful iteration, we created a design system that would work across the various formats and technologies that Ground News works with. The resulting interactions and visual design all exist to convey the values of understanding, transparency, and media literacy, regardless of what a users beliefs are.
We introduced a browser plugin, over 50 different new layouts for the web platform, a design system for the social media posts, and several different landing pages and newsletters. It was a full design overview and strategy that is now a core part of countless users' daily news. Ground News’ monthly subscriber base grew 10x since we started, and we’re so proud to see them continue to grow.
