Yahoo Finance The Guardian's all-new Daily app: 'It's a snapshot of how we see the world'
The Guardian has launched a new digital product called the Daily. It is an app that aims to replicate the experience of reading the newspaper on tablets and mobile phones – a companion to our existing ‘Live’ app and which is now available to subscribers to our digital subscription bundle. The Daily digital subscription costs £11.99/$19.99 USD/$21.50 AUD a month, with a special 3 month trial offer of £5.99 a month, and is available to subscribe to directly from the Guardian site.
How did the new app come about? How does it differ from the existing Guardian/Live apps?
Related: The Guardian releases newly designed Daily app across iOS and Android devices
Juliette Laborie, our director of digital reader revenues: The Daily is the new flagship product of our digital subscription bundle and a companion to the Live app, which is geared more towards breaking news. The Daily, in contrast, is more focused, with a finite selection of curated stories for those who sometimes feel overwhelmed by the news. The Daily and Live app complement each other, so subscribers have freedom to choose how they stay informed.
Caspar Llewellyn Smith, the Guardian’s digital platforms editor: Following extensive research and conversations with readers, we saw a clear appetite for a digital product that replicates the experience of reading the newspaper. Unlike the website or app, with everything we publish, and news breaking 24/7, we wanted to create something you can read in one sitting or simply dip into your favourite section, say.
Alex Breuer, our executive creative director: The new Daily app is an evolution of the existing editions app. Previously available only on iPad, readers can now enjoy this new experience on phones and tablets, on both iOS and Android devices.
David Blishen, our group product manager for journalism: The production process for the original Daily app relied on some components that were becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. The new app has been incorporated into existing modern tools, and will we hope provide a platform for making more “edition”-based products.
Why the appetite for the Daily?
CLS Different readers can want different things - in fact, the same reader can want different things, depending on the time of the day or how they’re feeling. Look outside – the world is in turmoil, so it’s little surprise that readers have been turning to us in record numbers for our coverage of issues of like Brexit or the election or Trump’s impeachment. We serve that need by providing rolling coverage of world events on our website and through our Live app, using staples of digital publishing like liveblogs (which the Guardian pioneered). There’s instant analysis – and don’t forget minute-by-minute football match reports or instant recaps of TV shows our readers love, too. But of course all that can feel overwhelming at times - so the Daily offers an antidote. It’s a very calm space, which offers you a snapshot of the Guardian sees the world at a particular moment in time.
AB The original tablet edition was released in 2011 as a digital replacement for the printed newspaper. The new Daily still mirrors the traditional “newspaper moment”, as a finite edit of the key stories of the day, but has been designed to sit alongside the other Guardian digital platforms: there is a commonality of structure and design language.
Who decides what should be included?
CLS The team who edit our Daily edition take their cue from the strongest stories we have published online and in print during the previous 24 hours – from hard news to lifestyle. So it reflects the paper and website.
Who can access the app and how?
JL Anyone who has a smartphone or tablet on Android and iOS above iOS 12 and Android 8. It’s available globally, although of course it is published from a UK perspective and we aim it primarily to British audiences.
CLS Subscribers to the digital pack, who also get our Live app, can now access this, so they have a wider choice of reading experience.
DB We continue to review the devices the new app is available on: our ambition is to make it available to as many as possible.
How did all the aspects of the product come together? How long did the process take?
JL We’ve been thinking about it for over a year – initially in the form of a strategy we formulated last year - and then in April we began the work in earnest.
CLS We have known for some time that we needed to evolve the existing app from a technical perspective to provide the best product and better suit the needs of our readers. As with all of our digital products, it was a highly collaborative approach, involving editors, software engineers, designers and user experience experts. We always try to take this approach at the Guardian.
AB The design and development process was fast-paced. The range of devices and platforms we wanted to offer the experience on presented a range of technical and design challenges. We validated the first design concepts with existing Daily readers and readers of other Guardian platforms. As work progressed we opened up early versions to readers in the from of a beta version. This was hugely valuable in guiding the team through a complex process of prioritisation.
DB We had an internal prototype in three months and worked to a tight deadline to get the product into the App Store. The team was supported by our Editorial Tools development team, who handled the creation of the production tools.
What are your hopes for the app? What will success look like?
JL It finding its audience, managing to recreate the enjoyment of a well-edited selection of journalism in a digitally native setting, with beautiful images and a great reading experience.
We also want to explore similar products in different territories: the US and Australia, and others, thanks to the tools and software we have built to support the Daily.
DB The platform that creates the edition is versatile and I hope we can produce a range of products with it. However, our attention at the moment is working on the feedback of the existing Daily users who have highlighted areas for improvement that we’re actively trying to address.
How does this fit in with the Guardian’s reader-funded strategy?
CLS We are delighted that so many readers have decided to support us over recent years, and we know that different products suit different readers in different territories, so we try to provide a set of great options.
What has initial reaction been?
CLS It has been very well received and, as always, we have been listening carefully to user feedback with a view to making changes and further improvements. In this instance, we heard from readers that they’d like the Daily edition to do some different things, so the latest edition includes a better offline reading experience, the ability to read the whole edition swiping from article to article, automatic download, more flexibility around the ability to manage editions, and we intend to roll it out with further changes in due course.
Some loyal iPad users have said they preferred the old app, so we are working through all of their feedback and seeing how we can retain the best of the old app within something that is both much more solid in technical terms and designed as a modern, fresh-feeling, daily edition of the Guardian.
AB We knew that our bold ambition of satisfying existing loyal readers and inspiring new readers would elicit a broad range of views. Over the next few releases, readers will see a mix of new and familiar features arrive – evolutions to galleries, navigation and layout are a few of them. One of the core technical advantages of the new Daily app is that we are able to add and improve the experience with a pace that we would have struggled to match with the previous version.
What’s next for your team?
CLS We’d like to see a growing number of satisfied Daily edition readers across the UK, and in the coming weeks and months we’ll be testing the appetite for more localised versions in the US and Australia, and then audiences elsewhere.
DB The existing edition keys off the newspaper: for future editions we’re looking at what content editors promote most across the site and using that as the basis for suggesting what should be included.
