The
idea for this app is fairly simple. The basic premise is that, truthfully, I
don’t know the first thing about what kind of issues are important to people in
India who are connecting to the internet for the first time. So why should I be
the one in charge of writing content and deciding what to show the people who
use my app? Instead, my app leaves content creation and curation to the people
who use it. Content is created and uploaded by users (basic drawing
functionality is built into the app, akin to the story presented below) and
then categorized as something like science, culture, politics, etc. The piece
can then be found in the appropriate section under “Explore Recent
Trends”. When other users view the piece, they can either vote it thumbs
up or thumbs down. Through this basic method, the ‘best’ pieces as dubbed by
the users, rise to the top of each recent trends section and if a certain
threshold is passed, then is displayed prominently on the homepage under
“What’s Viral Now?”. For all stories, users can also share it (mail
button) or favorite it (heart/+ button) which saves the story. Users can also look at archived stories that have gone viral in the past under the “Previously Viral” link.
This is a sample story that has 6 scenes: an intro and 5 exhibits. A title of a comparable piece from an existing news source might read “Five Things Trump Hopes to Accomplish as President.”
First storyboard (users can swipe between storyboards)
Second storyboard
third storyboard
fourth storyboard
fifth storyboard
sixth storyboard
Because of the ease
in which people can create and publish their work online (which will likely be
the first time they’ve done that), the platform will be exciting for people and
they will naturally want to show what they’ve done to others. They will tell
their family/friends to get the app and check out their work. As more and more
people join, creating more and better content, a positive feedback cycle
begins. With more people, the content gets better, prompting more people to
join, which means better content…
Because
the images are very simple, they are not very data-intensive which is a huge factor
for these people as their coverage is probably not great (would be
prohibitively slow with more complex images) and data is limited.
The scenes in the example story are also noticeably scarce of text, catering towards the semi-literate audience. A great feature of this app is that as the publics literacy levels and tastes change, this app will automatically adjust the content it provides. If users are barely literate, then content with almost no words will get upvoted the most. If literacy levels go up, and people are able to tell richer stories with a few extra words, then those stories will be the ones that get upvoted. The same is true of tastes: while politics might be hot around election cycles, and sports around the time of championship games, the content will be adjusted to whatever people want to read the most.
Users will stay
engaged because they have the option to both create and view content. If they
have viewed all of the stories they’re interested in already, perhaps they’d
like to give their own take on things. Creativity in how the stories are
conveyed with just a simple interface is rewarded with your story going viral.
That hope of having something you created be viewed by more people than you
could ever meet in your life is something that will continuously bring people
back to the app.
