“Bitch. It’s a noun. It’s a verb. It’s a magazine. It’s a feminist media organization.”
Andie Zeisler, co founder
Bitch media has been around since 1996. Throughout these two decades, it has become an institution of feminism in the interwebs. Now is also one of the last standing pockets of intersectionality in the ever-shrinking landscape of feminist media outlets.
Bitch is also a struggling nonprofit. There are constant fundraising calls to keep their -beautifully made- print magazine alive while staying an independent media organization.
Though it has over 80,000 readers worldwide and the website has 500,000 daily hits, it needs help in one crucial way: getting through to a younger generation.
The Research: Why Isn’t Gen Z Paying Attention?
Bitch Media claims to have a diverse audience and young active readers that are discovering feminism and social activism. But, through a survey with more than 100 answers, we discovered that when it comes to people between 18 and 25 years old, only 23% had heard about Bitch Media as a feminist, socially conscious magazine.
In contrast, the direct and indirect competitors were getting better numbers:
- 73% were well aware of Teen Vogue
- 50% was fond of the — as of now-defunct — Man Repeller
- 47% knew of Seventeen magazines
- 39% were frequent Jezebel readers
What’s more, all of them got turned onto their preferred feminist media because of recommendations from friends. Evangelization from readers plays a major role in becoming a usual reader of feminist publications.
We decided to dig deeper into the habits of that 23% that had heard about Bitch Media.
Interviewing Bitch Readers
Through a series of interviews with 12 people, we found out all of them were casual readers of the online version of Bitch. They’d either found the website through online searches or recommendations from an older friend and they decided to stick around. Time and again they’d make it a point to visit the website and stay up to date with the latest essays.
“I absolutely love the fact that they amplify voices that are nowhere to be found in mainstream publications”
“I like Bitch because it makes me think. They don’t talk down to me”
Out of the 12 people we interviewed, 10 mentioned Bitch routinely put out content that spoke to their interests, and 11 fell represented by the web in ways they couldn’t find elsewhere.
So if they love it so much, why weren’t they sharing and following Bitch articles themselves?
It’s because they don’t actually finish reading the articles.
This generation is reading more than previous generations, 80% of them are interested in social issues, and 86% invest between 4 and 8 minutes of reading time per article. Up to 15 minutes if they are really interested in the topic.
But they were claiming to be interested in Bitch’s topics, so what was up?
We were baffled. So we asked to see how they’d typically go about surfing their preferred outlets, including Bitch Media. Then, the problem became clear.
Users would typically browse on the home page, click on a title they found attractive and found themselves in front of a giant wall of text.
- No images to give them a rest.
- No subtitles to give them a sense of where the info they might like might be.
- Not even bolded sentences to guide their attention.
Put off by this, they’d go to the navigation bar to try and go to a section with different articles and there was even more trouble: The labels were confusing them. They didn’t know where to click to find a movie review, for example.
The current Bitch Media website divides content into “Screen”, “Media”, and “Internets”. Users were confused as to where they could find content that they associated with “Screen”, “Internets”, and “Media” at the same time.
During a task analysis in which we asked the users to find a review for a Netflix show, we found it took them on average 45 seconds to get to the section they were looking for. All of them doubted where they were supposed to go.
Designing a Better Reading Experience
The first thing we did was a Card Sorting with 10 users to have a better understanding of what the different labels should be for all sections and define a new sitemap.
With the Card Sorting result we divided the content into 5 sections: “News”, “Entertainment”, “Books”, “Music”, and “Bitch reads” for Bitch’s book recommendations. The old labels, we used as tags inside the articles to further organize content.
Simultaneously, we worked on understanding the editorial line and creative concept that has made Bitch such an attractive option for their readers. We narrowed it down to 3 adjectives that would guide our creative decisions:
- Inclusive
- Bold
- Thoughtful
With that in mind, we got out our red markers and checked and double-checked all colors for accessibility, and font sizes for readability.
We also went crazy with a style tide and a moodboard that would represent the inclusivity, diversity, and eclectic approach the magazine is known for.
After a brainstorming session, we came up with our value proposition:
Every article would feature a summary box that would give the reader’s the main takeaways in text, video, and audio formats.
To further encourage reading we also decided to try out a new format for short-form articles (2000 words or less).
We would divide the space into two: On the left side, readers would find images, videos, and pictures. On the right side, they would find the text divided into shorter paragraphs separated into clearly marked subsections. We also added colorful snippets with the more important quotes and takeaways throughout the article.
After testing both the new labels and the new format for our articles we got feedback from 10 users:
- 10/10 appreciated having a summary at the end of each article and they especially liked the audio option.
- 8/10 said the colorful quotes throughout the article would help them navigate to the information they wanted, but asked us to make space them out better as too many would end up being distracting
- 10/10 were able to find the right category for the articles they were searching for in less than 10 seconds.
- 10/10 said that while they like the double-column format for shorter articles, they wouldn’t like it in a long-form article as it would make it seem even longer.
With that knowledge, we did the necessary changes and moved on to long-form content.
For those longer articles, we decided to keep the traditional format users wanted. But we did, add the text bubbles for quotes, and still decided to shorten paragraphs and add subtitles throughout to give readers a rest and better understanding of what the article was about at first glance.
Our last addition to the redesign was an empty state screen. On the current Bitch Media website broken links result in a pretty typical “Page Not Found” message. We decided to design a personalized message infused with the brand’s attributes and personality.
Check out our prototype over at Behance.
Learnings
- People do read. It’s time to let go of the myth that people and especially young people don’t read.
- Never underestimate the power of using H3 titles throughout your articles.
- A good format is just as important as good content.
Contributors
UI, moodboard, visual analysis, prototyping: Maria Barón
UX Researching, UX writing, testing: Beatriz Marte
Interaction design: Maria Barón, Beatriz Marte
