Timeline 5 months
Team size 3 designers
Deliverables responsive web, mobile & tablet apps
Consultancy Moment

My contributions
Brand voice development
Competitive analysis and persona development
Development documentation and QA
Prototype generation
UX / UI design on mobile and responsive web
Workshop facilitation

Timeline 5 months
Team size 3 designers
Deliverables responsive site, mobile & tablet apps

My contributions
Workshop facilitation
Competitive analysis and persona development
Brand voice development
UX / UI design on mobile and responsive web
Prototype generation
Development documentation and QA

Timeline 5 months
Team size 3 designers
Deliverables responsive site, mobile & tablet apps

My contributions
Workshop facilitation
Competitive analysis and persona development
Brand voice development
UX / UI design on mobile and responsive web
Prototype generation
Development documentation and QA

Timeline 5 months
Team size 3 designers
Deliverables responsive site, mobile & tablet apps

My contributions
Workshop facilitation
Competitive analysis and persona development
Brand voice development
UX / UI design on mobile and responsive web
Prototype generation
Development documentation and QA

Timeline 5 months
Team size 3 designers
Deliverables responsive site, mobile & tablet apps

My contributions
Workshop facilitation
Competitive analysis and persona development
Brand voice development
UX / UI design on mobile and responsive web
Prototype generation
Development documentation and QA

Great Big Story

CNN wanted to expand into a new audience segment—millennials and Gen Z—that their current content offerings weren’t able to reach. In an effort to engage a younger audience and attract new sponsorships, a video network known as Great Big Story was conceived.

We worked with the executive creative director of CNN Digital, VP of video development, and VP of multi-platform video products for CNN for 5 months.

Great Big Story

CNN wanted to expand into a new audience segment—millennials and Gen Z—that their current content offerings weren’t able to reach. In an effort to engage a younger audience and attract new sponsorships, a video network known as Great Big Story was conceived.

Great Big Story

CNN wanted to expand into a new audience segment—millennials and Gen Z—that their current content offerings weren’t able to reach. In an effort to engage a younger audience and attract new sponsorships, a video network known as Great Big Story was conceived.

Great Big Story

CNN wanted to expand into a new audience segment—millennials and Gen Z—that their current content offerings weren’t able to reach. In an effort to engage a younger audience and attract new sponsorships, a video network known as Great Big Story was conceived.

Great Big Story

CNN wanted to expand into a new audience segment—millennials and Gen Z—that their current content offerings weren’t able to reach. In an effort to engage a younger audience and attract new sponsorships, a video network known as Great Big Story was conceived.

Great Big Story was born out of the mind of Chris Berend, the VP of video development at CNN. He had been thinking of this product for years. So with buy-in from Andrew Morse, an EVP, and other leadership at Turner, the idea finally had funding to become real.

We kicked off the project with a series of workshops to define GBS' competitive space, voice, audience, value prop, personas and scenarios.

Given that we were building GBS from the ground up, we needed to align on attributes for the brand, content and product realms. Brand and product would be our team's responsibility, and content was a realm the CNN team would expand upon.

We broke down a list of about two dozen competitors in video, media, news and entertainment. We evaluated companies and their products on a variety of criteria points, and used our rankings to give depth to our two personas.

After the 5 week definition phase, our group rolled into the concept phase. CNN brought in technology, video and marketing stakeholders to our reviews. Together, we defined the IA of the products for MVP, and mapped out the content logic for development to begin building on the backend.

We had a series of workshops with CNN to brainstorm and discuss ideas for key parts of the product. We paper prototyped, sketched, and iterated on our group's input over the course of 3 weeks.

Our areas of focus were the navigation, the video feed, playback experience and delight features that'd round out the personality of the new company. The vast majority of our UX and IA work was shared through interactive prototypes.

In parallel, we worked with the ECD of CNN to develop the brand and visual language of Great Big Story.

We brought in about 15 designers at Moment to sketch on themes, then refined, expanded and iterated on selected directions. Our guiding principles for the brand were to be playful, confident, irreverent, cool and clever.

The final mark had elements that could be animated in video, and also pulled back for a more professional touch. We imagined the rocket to be a playful element used throughout the experience, and strong, clean typography would pair well with any type of video produced.

The UI itself was explored first in responsive web, then scaled to mobile and tablet apps. Our typical approach to design reviews was thrown out in favor of sharing everything we had explored throughout the week.

The CNN team wanted to see every exploration and every option we had thought of before feeling confident in selecting directions forward. Be it whole screens, specific features or focused modules.

The Outcome

Great Big Story launched in October 2015 to users across the world. It was met with resounding praise, press and backing by the media and its parent company. Within 6 months after launch CNN reported GBS had 40 million views a month, 6 million fans across social platforms, and a valuation of $250 million.

In the years since its launch, Great Big Story premiered documentaries at Cannes, took over Sundance and SXSW with immersive interactive exhibits, received Emmy wins and collected numerous awards for both their content and their product.

Sadly due to COVID, Great Big Story closed their doors in September 2020.

Great Big Story launched in October 2015 to users across the world. It was met with resounding praise, press and backing by the media and its parent company. Within 6 months after launch there were metric counts of 40 million views a month, 6 million fans across social platforms, and a valuation of $250 million.

In the years since its launch, Great Big Story has premiered documentaries at Cannes, taken over Sundance and SXSW with immersive interactive exhibits, received Emmy nominations and collected numerous awards for both their content and their product.

Great Big Story launched in October 2015 to users across the world. It was met with resounding praise, press and backing by the media and its parent company. Within 6 months after launch there were metric counts of 40 million views a month, 6 million fans across social platforms, and a valuation of $250 million.

In the years since its launch, Great Big Story has premiered documentaries at Cannes, taken over Sundance and SXSW with immersive interactive exhibits, received Emmy nominations and collected numerous awards for both their content and their product.

Great Big Story launched in October 2015 to users across the world. It was met with resounding praise, press and backing by the media and its parent company. Within 6 months after launch there were metric counts of 40 million views a month, 6 million fans across social platforms, and a valuation of $250 million.

In the years since its launch, Great Big Story has premiered documentaries at Cannes, taken over Sundance and SXSW with immersive interactive exhibits, received Emmy nominations and collected numerous awards for both their content and their product.

Great Big Story launched in October 2015 to users across the world. It was met with resounding praise, press and backing by the media and its parent company. Within 6 months after launch there were metric counts of 40 million views a month, 6 million fans across social platforms, and a valuation of $250 million.

In the years since its launch, Great Big Story has premiered documentaries at Cannes, taken over Sundance and SXSW with immersive interactive exhibits, received Emmy nominations and collected numerous awards for both their content and their product.

cassiematias@gmail.com

Get in touch