We\u2019re proud to share that ABC News has been recognised with a Good Design Award in the Digital Design category, one of Australia\u2019s most respected design accolades. This achievement reflects the dedication of our team to reimagine how Australians experience news in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.<\/p>\n
The \u201cFuture News\u201d website & app redesign project wasn\u2019t just about refreshing ABC News. It was about tackling one of the industry\u2019s biggest challenges: news avoidance. Our goal was clear: prove that authoritative, trusted journalism can be delivered in a way that feels modern, engaging, and accessible for all Australians.<\/p>\n
Redefining News for a Digital Audience<\/p>\n
Future News was driven by a bold ambition: transform ABC News digital experiences to be relevant for emerging and underserved audiences. We challenged the perception that news must be formal or intimidating, creating a design that is vivid, approachable, and easy to navigate.<\/p>\n
This transformation went far beyond aesthetics. It was grounded in an audience-first strategy, shaped by extensive research and real user feedback. We looked to interrogate and bring a design & audience-led approach to foundational challenges facing the news industry, including:<\/p>\n
The challenge of engaging and building a direct relationship with younger audiences & women, many of whom feel digital news destinations aren\u2019t designed for them.The rapidly evolving audience expectations of a modern, digital experience and digital storytelling formatsThe industry-wide challenge of news avoidance behaviours, with people reporting news has a negative impact on mood as a key reason they are consuming less news [Digital News Report: Australia 2025]Taking a design-centred, strategic approach to understanding these problem spaces \u2013\u00a0we built the future news design project around three focus themes:Delivering digital-first experiences for the breadth & diversity of ABC\u2019s journalism and storytellingBuilding habit and deeper relationships with readersReducing news avoidance through more inviting experiencesThe result? A cleaner, more colourful interface, dynamic storytelling tools, and features that make news consumption simpler and more rewarding.Designing with PurposeTo deliver on ABC\u2019s forward strategy & our ambition to provide a modern news experience for all Australians. This project required a considered design process, tailored for the news context.<\/p>\n
ABC Digital Product’s Anthony Bratovich and \u00a0Nathan Elvery accept the Good Design Award for ABC News<\/p>\n
A core project team made up of designers, journalists, editors, product, engineering and digital product researchers helped ensure the design was built with deep understanding of journalism and audience, along with technical and production feasibility.<\/p>\n
The design process started with an extensive industry and internal research review focused on the project\u2019s key questions & audience challenges. We then built a design vision for the news products through an innovative, iterative design sprint process that incorporated \u2018futures thinking\u2019 workshops, a news user needs model fit for the ABC\u2019s unique context, co-design sessions with editors & journalists and dozens of hours of primary audience research.<\/p>\n
Every design solution was then prototyped, tested and refined with existing loyal users of ABC News and underserved, emerging news audiences from across the country. As we launched the new-look design, audience were central to the rollout plans\u00a0, with audience and journalist feedback resulting in ongoing improvements to the layout and visual design.<\/p>\n
What Changed and Why It Matters Comment by Nathan Elvery: should probably refine this list of changes e.g. new homepage layout<\/p>\n
The redesign introduced a modern look & feel, that\u2019s calmer and more unified experience across the website and app.<\/p>\n
Key improvements include:<\/p>\n
A new homepage with dynamic layout options that can reflect the news agenda & showcase our stories in more powerful waysModern colour palette for clarity, emphasis, helping audiences understand diversity of story types as they scan the newsDynamic vertical video and rich media storytelling, with audio & video cards integrated into the top storiesPersonalised \u2018For You\u2019 feed for relevant, swipeable news, and feeds tailored to suit your moodContent signposting like labels and read time estimates to help audiences more easily understand the newsWhy This Award Matters<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Good Design Award is more than recognition for this project — it\u2019s validation that design can transform how people connect with news. Future News is a step toward making ABC News inclusive, modern, and indispensable for Australians today and tomorrow. We\u2019re looking forward to continuing to evolve the ABC\u2019s digital news experience to better serve our audience.<\/p>\n
A special thank you to the \u201cFuture News\u201d project team that worked tirelessly to deliver this work: Simon Ward (Visual design lead), Sophie Brown (design research), Veronica Apap (News, New Audience Lead), Peter Marsh (News, Supervising Producer) Nathan Elvery (Group Product Manager), Francis Keil (designer), Anthony Bratovich (News design lead), Alex Sommerfeld (Engineering, Tech Lead) and Grant Sherlock (Managing Editor, News Digital).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re proud to share that ABC News has been recognised with a Good Design Award in the Digital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2655,6905,64,63,142509,16526,134,130526,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-238217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-abc","9":"tag-abc-news","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-digital-design","13":"tag-digital-news","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-good-design-award","16":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}