Cutting Through the Noise in Digital News - Mata App

Mata App - News In A snap

Overview

Mata is a digital news platform designed to deliver current information in a fast, compact, and distraction-free format. This product aims to solve the exhausting experience of reading overly long articles cluttered with ads.

Role

Product Designer. Including Research, UI Design, Usability testing (early phase)

Client & Duration

Mata.today (Nov 2023 - Present)

Background

Currently, most online news platforms aim to maximize reading time and ad impressions. As a result, articles that could be consumed in less than one minute are stretched into long paragraphs filled with ads and clickbait. This discourages users, especially younger audiences, from actively staying updated with the news.

Goals

The primary objective of Mata is to reshape modern users, especially Gen Z and millennials, to consume news by creating a format that aligns with their behavior and preferences. Specifically, the product aims to:

• Provide easily digestible news that can be read in under one minute

• Summarize key points without sacrificing informational value

• Eliminate ad clutter to offer a smooth, focused reading experience

• Deliver an interface optimized for mobile, where most users access news

• Encourage daily news habits through intuitive and fast consumption patterns

Problem

Modern news consumers face several pain points that make traditional news platforms
ineffective for their needs:

• Lengthy articles demand too much time and attention in today’s fast-paced environment

• Heavy ad placements distract and frustrate readers

• Poor mobile optimization, making reading on the go uncomfortable

• Lack of engaging formats for a generation accustomed to interactive content on social media

Design Process

Research

First step, Defining the problem. I gathered insights from article and academic research. The focus was on how today's generations, especially Gen Z and younger millennials, are changing the way they consume news.

Insights from article, and Journals:

• A Research showed that over 60% of Gen Z access news through social media and prefer short-form, visual, and interactive news formats.

• Research of Psychology suggests younger audiences experience information fatigue when articles are too long, and prefer summaries or bullet points.

• Some article highlighted that bite-sized news improves information retention and speeds up
  fact-checking, as readers aren’t overwhelmed by opinion-heavy narratives.

Insight From Respondent : I also conducted a brief research study with five individuals from the Gen Z and millennial age groups. The method I used was a comparative interview focusing on similar products, specifically “Kompas Baca Cepat” and “Merdeka.com (swipe version).” In addition, I asked about their daily news-reading habits and behaviors.

Some key insights from the interviews include:

• All five participants agreed that reading news felt more comfortable using these two platforms compared to conventional news websites.

• They all found the interface of “Merdeka.com (swipe version)” easier to understand than that of “Kompas Baca Cepat.”

• All participants felt that both platforms lacked clear presentation of key news points.

• This generation often gets news updates from social media because the content is short and straight to the point. However, they are also aware that news on social media often carries the risk of clickbait.

Based on these findings, I summarized the problem statement as:

"How might we deliver news to the younger audience in a format that is both compact yet culturally relevant?"

Solution

I concluded the product should support a modern reading behavior by offering:

• Concise, to-the-point news format

• Engaging visual format, like interactive highlight cards

• Quick consumption experience (< 60 seconds per article)

Design - First Version

With the idea already presented and approved by the Mata team, which works in an agile way, I created an initial design concept for the Mata App including simple figma prototype for testing to real user

Testing

After designing and creating a simple prototype in Figma, I conducted a basic usability test with five individuals from the Gen Z and millennial age groups. I asked them to try both Mata and Merdeka.com (Swipe Version) alternately.

Key findings from this testing include:

• All five participants agreed that the initial news layout in Mata felt more familiar and interactive to them.

• Four out of five users were confused when viewing Mata's snap mode due to the zigzag reading pattern, which required more effort to follow.
  
  

The overall response was fairly positive, but there are still crucial usability issues that need to be improved.

Iteration: 2nd Version, End Design

Based on those research findings, I refined the design while staying true to Mata’s core identity—maintaining interactive news previews and improving the readability of news summaries.

Results

After making design iterations, I conducted another round of basic usability testing with the same age group as before. This time, I asked participants to compare the first and second versions of Mata's design, and then evaluate both against Merdeka.com's swipe version.

The results were as follows:

• All five participants felt they could focus better when reading news using the second version of Snap Mode compared to the first version.

• They also agreed that they could digest the news more quickly with the second Mata design. Thanks to scroll mechanism

• The scroll mechanism in Mata's Snap Mode was considered simpler to operate than the swipe feature in Merdeka.com. One contributing factor was that the news content in Mata's Snap Mode was brief, allowing users to read everything with just one or two scrolls.
  
  

These results were considered sufficient to move forward to the next stage of development.

Current Stage

Due to various factors, the Mata product is currently in its Alpha stage and still under development. Several core features have been tested, and ongoing improvements are being made based on early user feedback to ensure the best experience for the public launch. However, as of the time this article was written, the Alpha version is already available on both the Play Store and the App Store.