Now Here This Pop-up Newsstand
Experience Design, Pop-up Retail
Summary
Now Here This is a public experience that combines meditation and news to create a stronger sense of connection to the world.
Challenge
Create a pop-up retail experience that reimagines the newsstand - a dying category that serves mainly older customers and tourists. The experience must incorporate physical and digital touch points as well as a live brand ambassador.
Key insights
Our target audience (city dwellers 25 - 45) rarely visit newsstands. Though people want to understand current issues, the the extreme pace and volume of news is overwhelming. People end up skimming content superficially or disengaging all together. Everyone is tired of screens.
The Solution
Now Here This is a public place of pause and engagement with the world. Visitors listen to a short guided meditation followed by a news story. An optional opportunity to record an audio response and hear others’ responses offers visitors the chance to engage in a dialogue with neighbors.
Discover
We visited newsstands in San Francisco, Oakland and LA and didn’t observe that much news purchasing. So we surveyed and interviewed people about their news consumption, finding that our respondents want to be exposed to diverse perspectives but feel stressed or unknowledgeable about how to go about seeking out other sources. Staying up to date with the news was important for people’s social and professional lives but in practice felt like an overwhelming chore.
Define
We found an opportunity space for a more physical news experience and also played with the current model of a newsstand selling “many perspectives and many items.” We set “screen-free” as one of our design criteria for the experience and prototyped a concept called The Daily Press featuring news trivia while you wait for your pour-over coffee or tea to brew.
Develop
While people had a variety of gripes with the news, we had to choose just one problem to solve so we focused on the fact that people lacked the right headspace in which to consume news. We ran micropilots for our public meditation plus news concept in Berkeley and LA.
“I felt more relaxed and I was able to absorb more information”
Deliver
As visitors approached Now Here This, a brand ambassador invited them to find a spot at the wall, lean against the headrest and close their eyes. A one-minute guided meditation followed by a short news story played through their headphones. Afterwards, visitors could record an audio response to the story and listen to a reaction from another visitor. Around 100 people completed our pop-up newsstand experience.
Team: Cody Boeger, Anna Drabik, Sam Irons, Dane Wetschler, Rachel Wold
Course: Experience Studio, CCA DMBA, Fall 2017