1 Background

1.1 Advantages of Internet News Live Broadcast

In terms of television news, news live broadcast has been a very common program. Its effect and influence is more than revealing the result of event but leading the viewers and audience to experience the event at the scene. Meanwhile, the broadcast would be unpredictable, fresh and full of suspense, which would be quite attractive for the viewers. News live broadcast not only satisfies audience’s curiosity and meet their demands on interactions but cater for their fast and comprehensive access to information. So to say the live broadcast is a very attractive and catching approach for news presentation.

In China, the television news live broadcast mainly covers two types; one is ritual television news live broadcast and the other is event television news live broadcast. Although television news live broadcast is tending to be normalization, ritual news live broadcast is more common while the event news live broadcast is rare. A majority of television news broadcast has become pre-edited “live show”. Since timeliness is the eternal pursuit of news production, when a hot topic is approaching, people want to obtain first-hand news and information, however, such “live show” is second-hand materials after edition plus extra verification and correction and its single perspective, this kind of news lose its effects of timeliness, which cannot meet viewers’ expectation.

Speaking of timeliness, the Internet has a natural advantage. Every day there are countless messages spread on the Internet, but the valuable news is usually not the first time to be on the TV screen; break news even more so. In this regard, the Internet is always faster than the traditional TV media step, because it has a massive UGC (User Generated Content) as a strong content support. With the reduction of equipment costs, recording live as everyone can pick up the phone can easily complete the matter.

1.2 Conception of NetEase News Live Broadcast

NetEase News is professional news & information platform with professional edit teams and many We Media as well as large quantity of users. Based on natural advantages, we parallel PGC and UGC to create a news live broadcast ecology providing good experience. Live broadcast is no more the privilege of television and anybody or group can be a starter of news live broadcast. And perhaps in the future, there will be a large army of new live broadcast consisting of media group, content teams, media professionals, ordinary PGC, UGC, college students and others. The whole society of people would do news live broadcast.

2 Definition of Product Modality

2.1 Users Demand Generation

As mentioned above, the facts through ages have proved that live broadcast would enable users to feel reality of the news, to know and experience the living stories. Does that mean everything succeeds as we transport the live broadcast model of TV or PC age to mobile terminal? Of course not, it is irresponsible for the users. Now, let’s reconstruct live broadcast.

The traditional live broadcast is that the anchor showed the video and audio of occurrent events to the viewers, in which process the anchor would explain and remark on the event. The viewers, as acceptors, can only watch what was going on in the video. Through out observation, we found that if more viewers watched same news together, they would communicate, comment, cheer or stamp one’s feet… on the events and sometimes they would share other relevant information from other channels; thus it would be more lively. For example, here is a familiar scene, when you are watching sports game in a bar or your house with a couple of friends, you always comment the players performance with people around you during the game. And all these interactions and behaviors will enrich the live broadcast content invisibly and also allow the receiver or acceptor to become the participant of live broadcast, which would improve viewers’ experience and satisfaction.

Therefore, when watching live broadcast, it’s very important for viewers to start and participate in the interactions more than just watching and receiving information. So I wondered it would be a great idea if I transfer this behavior during our daily life to the online platform.

2.2 Interactive Model of NetEase News Live Broadcast Products

News live broadcast is always a presentation way in NetEase news, but the old and single state of “play on platform and audience watching” cannot perform the potential of live broadcast. The former modal issues are mainly as follows: anchor and viewers can only release content within limited styles and it is hard for users to generate contents; the interactions between anchors and users are quite rare, which not only constrain the production of more news but bad for stimulating user’s passion; thus various possibilities of transforming to live broadcast cannot be realized. Hence, in the revision, we have made great attempts regarding these two matters:

We produce and generate content via three channels of reporter’s live video broadcast, anchor’s releasing content and audience’s assist in posting content. Thus it would create a strong interactive broadcast circle of multiple channels with on-going communication between anchor and viewers and between viewers and viewers (See Fig. 1). Reporters explore live broadcast topic and collect live video resources at the spot; editors, as the anchors, tells content of live broadcast with supplementary materials, like graphs, texts, videos and links; Through this production circle of broadcast content, there are more valuable content can be generated by reporters and editors.

Fig. 1.
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Interactive status of PGC live broadcast

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There are multiple kinds of interactivities between viewers and anchors, like guessing, lucky draw, data competition; and the viewers can also add like or credit for anchor; viewers can have interactive communications, upload pictures or videos; viewers and anchors can have timely interactions in which they can quote each other’s words and those excellent lectures can be stick.

To ensure the excellent content can be viewed by more users, and what’s more, in order to make the content abundant, we allow and encourage the We media who can create the channel of new live broadcast. At the meantime, those channels can be subscribed to satisfy the user individuals favor (See Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
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The We media

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Except PGC, we also bring in UGC resources. We develop another application called Radish which provide the users a tool and a platform to transcribe and upload videos. This application is connected with Netease News application, the best videos are chosen to recommended on Netease News application so other users can watch them. The broadcasting room for UGC resources is more interactive and entertaining for users.

2.3 Function Design

According to the analysis of interactive model in the last chapter, users’ behaviors mainly include the following five types: viewing, browsing, inputting, uploading and interaction. Based on these five principal behaviors, we deduced five major functions of the product and they are video playing, information flow display, inputting text, uploading graphs, texts and voice and configurable plug-ins.

Layout Design.

As we mentioned in the abstract, the three core elements of news are timeliness, authenticity and accuracy, which are also our design goal. Before we start to design, we should think how to reflect and balance the three elements in experience design.

For timeliness, each broadcasting room has a report who is always online releasing the latest news. In our layout, we design the report’s modules to information flow pattern to make sure users are able to catch up the latest information.

For authenticity, we design a video playing module is each broadcasting room. When the events take place in different places, we even provide a multi-channel video switch function for people to get information.

For accuracy, we bring in UGC resources that make it possible for users to release the information they achieve directly, and the reporter can quote the information.

Among all behaviors of users during watching live broadcast, watching the video is the most persistent behavior. Therefore, the video playing module is at the top stability zone. During the live broadcast, anchor would explain for the video and upload pictures, videos and even links to supplement information. Thus, the anchor studio is just below the video module so that the information from the anchor can be presented in the way of information flow.

At the same time, audience can look through anchor’s information out of their own needs. In the last chapter, I mentioned about users’ interaction demands while watching live broadcast, yet this behavior is intermittent. So there is no need to put this function module at the most direct position. We set the chat room as the second option underneath the video module. Users can look through the chat information of the audience with manual switch to the “chat room”.

However, inputting and uploading can happen any time no matter it is during watching video, browsing or chatting. So the input box and upload entrance are fixed at the bottom of the screen and they wouldn’t hide themselves because of tab switch. As for guessing, lucky draw, reward and other interactions, they would vary with the content of live broadcast. Thus these functions are designed in some floating icon, which is quite flexible and feasible and some of them are designed as top news or plug-in (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
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Layout design

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As we mentioned, we provide another type of content production called UGC. This type of broadcast is different from PGC, so does design. According to the user’s behavior, it will make it more real for people to communicate face to face. So we design a fullscreen video playing layout which is quite different from the PGC broadcasting room. And the chat flow and the interactive button such as thumbing up, sending flowers is floating on the screen which the users can chat and interact with the host (See Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.
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Pic.2 layout design

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Details Design.

The live broadcast of NetEase News covers news events, entertainment stars, sports event, press conference, variety activities and others. As different types of live broadcast have different demands, we need a layout design to meet all various demands. For event news, there are multiple live broadcast sources at most times. For example, the American presidential election, users would switch to check every state election status and reporters at different states would release different videos. Under such circumstance, we need to provide multi-channel video switch function (see Fig. 5). While for sports event live broadcast, especially for player killing or competition, users would like to know the scores timely; and we shall provide scores showing plug-in for this kind of live broadcast.

Fig. 5.
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Multi-channel video switch function

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Additionally, live broadcast can be divided into notice, on air and review on the basis of live broadcast status. In each phase, there are different content. For the notice phase, the precedent information for users are the start time for live broadcast and it is necessary to provide remind function and make brief introduction for the live broadcast content. At this phase, there is not source for video resource and the video display module is replaced with some banner displaying live broadcast content. When it is on air, as mentioned above, there are five function modules on the screen. During the review, users focus more on watching and reading important information. Therefore, we provide key points focus viewing function (see Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.
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Key points focus viewing function

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The third detail of design I want to mention here is minimize the playing video area. We balance the layout of video and information feeds flow for the most users. In the otherwise, we provide another option for the user who want to focus on the feeds flow (see Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.
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Minimize the playing video area function

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UI Design.

The UI design of news live broadcast also follows the three core elements of news which are timeliness, authenticity and accuracy. We simplify the most design elements to make the information more obvious. The unified controls of button and icon reduce the cost of users cognition and development both. And we create a label of live to let user recognize the news type and status in the broadcasting list. And the animation effect make the user experience more smooth (see Fig. 8).

Fig. 8.
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UI design

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In the page of broadcast live, we design the timeline of each single information to show the timeliness of news. And every single information show as a card which is more easier to read (see Fig. 9).

Fig. 9.
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Timeline design

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3 Conclusion

News live broadcast is a way of news presentation rather than a special type of news. The paper is just tentative exploration for news live broadcast experience design at mobile terminals, we will continue to develop better interactive model based on practical data and real use condition of all users.

With the development of science and technology and changes of media, there will be more diverse types of live broadcast. I believe the new AR and VR technology would bring new change in news live broadcast and we will advance with the times to create better live broadcast experience.