Creating Must’ — the new online informative platform about the world of tomorrow

Even you’ve never seen a single episode of Games of Thrones it’s pretty sure that you’ve heard theories around the TV Show. One of the latest was about the White Walkers being a metaphor for the climatic change.

Things need to change

Actually it’s not that stupid. Climate issues and environment matters are not just trendy topic. Today a lot of people feel concerned about the future of the Earth and our current ways of living.

We can read about it on all sorts of media, mostly on Internet but it’s not enough yet. We can find a lot of scattered information about such burning social issues but there is not one main and strong medium that provides centralized content.

Introducing Must’

That’s why we created Must’: an online informative platform about the world of tomorrow, the one that we want to see. With true and inclusive content, Must’ guides people who wants to align their lifestyle to their vision of a better place. This new media offers consumption alternatives and discusses current global issues.

We know that the movement is already here, if you want to join, you Must’.

Elaine already did. She is the typical user of Must’. She is a 35 years-old busy working woman who wants to make things change. She truly believes that the world can be better if everyone does his part. Elaine reads articles during her few breaks to nourish her mind but there is not one media that provides all the content she is looking for. Must’ can change that by offering her a new horizon.

Look and feel

The general feel of Must’ was inspired both by Japanese minimalism and Scandinavian design. It’s about mixing geometric shapes with bright colors. Must’s universe is fresh, sober, but also cheerful with a lot of light. All in all, Must is a feeling. But more than that, it’s about bringing people together and reconnecting with what really matters.

That’s what we wanted to show in our design choices. Everything was thought to the very detail to match Elaine’s expectations. The Lato typeface comes from a Polish designer and it means “Summer”. It’s believed to be an unisex typeface that conveys a feeling of warmth with a strong structure that provides stability.The logo is made with the Dawning of a New Day typeface, which means that each new day is a chance to start fresh free from past mistakes, it conveys hope. About colors now. Our main color is the green blue. Green is nature, peace, life. But so is Blue. Blue is happiness, trust — it’s strong and fluid as the tides of the ocean. Mixing the two gave us a powerful identity that we needed to balance with a more warmth color: the mustard yellow.

All this time, you may have been wondering what does “ Must’ ” mean?

Must’ is short for Mustard, because our topics are spicy and we MUST tackle them.

Responsive Design

It’s very important to us that our content is available whenever, wherever to everyone, on all devices. That’s why our solution is responsive! Also we know from our researches that when they are at home people like to go on desktop devices, but during the day, when they have little time during public transport or lunch break they like to have a mobile-friendly solution. This is Elaine’s case, she just finished eating with her colleagues and wants to check articles that she may like.

She arrives on Must’s homepage and checks what’s new. She could filter the articles but not today, she’s in the mood for some Society section related content. In there, the first title catches her attention so she opens it, but her lunch break is almost over and she doesn’t have time to read it so she saves it for later. Then on her way home, she goes back to her profile to check her saved articles!

This prototype is an MVP and we already improved it after usability testing with 5 users. Most insights regarded legibility and some UI choices.

Next steps

Short-term

We would like to offer a Premium Subscription with exclusive and extensive content for our most enthusiastic readers. That will also ensure more important revenues for Must’.

Mid-term

Since Must’ is about connecting people, we want to push forward our community and blog features

Long-term

Last but not least, we would like to organize events and talks in order to gather people, and to allow our community to come to life.

Thank you for reading, let me know what you think :)