Aswin Menon - Design Portfolio

Grapevine News

An AI powered adaptive news reading experience that solves for trust, utility & growth - all at once

TL; DR

Designed Grapevine News - an AI-powered news product that delivers news in short-form, adapting language and complexity to the reader’s preference. Blended the best of AI summaries with a clean, game-like reading experience to drive daily engagement. Contributed to a 40% MoM retention uplift in early cohorts.

Timeline:

Design & development Jul - Oct 2024
Launched Oct 7 2024

Team:

1 Designer, 1 PM, 3 Engineers (FE, BE, DS)

Context

Grapevine app for professionals was growing as one of India’s leading anonymous professional network. However, engagement was largely tied to its community posts & salary discussions - episodic in nature. To build a stronger daily habit loop, we explored adjacent content formats that could plug seamlessly into our network’s ethos. The solution?

A news product built for professionals - signal over noise, and designed to respect the reader’s intelligence & time.

Grapevine News

Grapevine
News

Goals for V1

Prove that a TG for a news product exists within the Grapevine App
Design the product stage-by-stage, that is easy to develop and test.
Experience should feel native to Grapevine app, let users have more control over the form factor and language.
Make it a habit-forming user experience with simple rewards for retention, implement user acquisition loops.

Discovery & Research 🧪

Interviewed 14 Grapevine users - PMs, founders, engineers, designers.
Key pain points with existing news apps (Inshorts, Google News, Twitter):

"Too much noise and spam"
"Tired of being tricked by clickbait headlines"
"No control over tonality, need simpler English"
"InShorts doesn't feel polished enough"

Studied UX of Artifact, Substack, Inshorts, AI Optimized content apps. Acquired Testflight beta access to Particle News.

Substack best suited for a weekend read, not daily.
Particle News offered one too many features.
Very impressed by Perplexity summary cards.
InShots' form factor allows them to charge a lot per ad impression.

Product Scope ⚙️

Roadmap for Design 🎨

A vertically scrollable stack of news cards, within a tab called "News" within Grapevine app, each summarizing one key news piece.

Single screen user onboarding & walkthrough

Ability to toggle language between language styles:
- 5 Bullets (Heading + bullets)
- Explain Like I'm 5 (Extra simplified)
- Five W’s (Who, What, When, Where, & Why)
- Gist (One paragraph)
- Gen-Z (Adds a dash of fun)
Streak system to retain users & add competition.
Share & Invite mechanics
Customizing topics, Admin controls, Viewing history & more

Success Metrics 🎯

Avg daily opens: >3 per user
Swipes per session: >5
Swipes per session: >10
DAU uplift: +12% among cohort
MAU uplift: +15% among cohort
News tab to become 3rd most visited page in app

Design 🎨

Less is more: Simplest form factor, clean typography, no distractions, generous white space and soft transitions.

Keep it fun: Introduce coloured cards, keep the tone light when communicating with users

Designing for Growth: Introduce a soft gate - each user gets 3 invites to bring others in, to create urgency, drive word-of-mouth, and kept the quality of the early cohort high.

↪ 3.1 - Onboarding to Home

↪ 3.2 - Card design

↪ 3.3 - Reading streak

↪ 3.4 - Requesting an Invite Code

↪ 3.5 - Sharing an Invite

4. Outcomes & Takeaways 🏁

Even in noisy social apps, news can work if it respects user attention.

Tone adaptability is underrated - users felt in control of their mental capacity.
Designing for trust > designing for engagement.
Plugging into a native habit loop is key.
Users become ambassadors when the experience is positive

News card swipes: Oct 7 - Full Rollout, Oct 21 - 100k, Nov 9 - 200k, Dec 19 - 850k, Dec 28 - 1 Million

Avg daily news opens per active user: 3.1 - validation of native habit loop
% of users who adjusted their language preference at least once - 67% - validation of adaptability feature.
Invite-only access model with just 3 passes per user spiked new user signups.
News swipes became the daily ritual - 22%+ better weekly retention compared to normal users
#5 on App store top charts for news category

Even in noisy social apps, news can work if it respects user attention.

Tone adaptability is underrated - users felt in control of their mental capacity.
Designing for trust > designing for engagement.
Plugging into a native habit loop is key.
Users become ambassadors when the experience is positive

News card swipes:
Oct 7 - Full Rollout, Oct 21 - 100k, Nov 9 - 200k,
Dec 19 - 850k, Dec 28 - 1 Million

Avg daily news opens per active user: 3.1 - validation of native habit loop
% of users who adjusted their language preference at least once - 67% - validation of adaptability feature.
Invite-only access model with just 3 passes per user spiked new user signups.
News swipes became the daily ritual - 22%+ better weekly retention compared to normal users
#5 on App store top charts for news category