CitizenSpeaks / A service for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Designing for Services

With revenues falling and companies failing all over the country, the printed news has to be rethought of not as a product but as a service. To us, the future of news lies in establishing new rituals of interactions; rituals that involve not only the consumption of news, but meaningful contribution.

With CitizenSpeaks, our team envisioned a future of citizen journalism where individuals contribute to a collective and local social discourse.

Embodied in a digital inteface, physical forum, and printed news form, CitizenSpeaks is a news service that allows users to vote on existing articles, attend a forum to discuss topics, and contributes to a monthly printed special edition.

User Research

We focused specifically on the younger "transient" market for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG). The main focus of our research was not on where news already exists, but where news could be. Specifically we researched our audience's rituals through User Journals, Online Surveys, and Generative collage exercises.

Service Blueprint

We used a service blueprint to design and communicate CitizenSpeaks. The service outlined in this blueprint covers all the components from the digital interface, the CitizenSpeaks event, and the print edition.

Final Design

Our final design was communicated through a scenario re-enactment during the presentation (see the final presentation). The digital interface is made up of a web component and a mobile citizen pass. The web interface allows for users to "discuss" or "dissent" news articles; each vote pushes up a news article for potential assembly discourse and publication. Invitations are sent out to CitizenSpeak members who voted.

In the assembly, topic groups are formed to write and contribute to the final printed special edition. Each citizen contribute recieves an update to their citizen pass, which becomes a badge that reflects their contributions.

top /