1M Daily Views: The Short-Form Video Feature Changing The Way Users Consume News
mako mobile app
UX Designer
February 2025
Introduction
mako redefines news consumption with a short-form video feed, delivering bite-sized, reliable content across news, entertainment, food, travel, and more. Engaging, swipeable, and trusted—this feature drives 1M daily views while creating a new income method by using new kinds of ads to maximize revenue.
What Happened
User Goal
Users want to efficiently consume reliable news and entertainment content in an engaging, short video format that fits into their busy daily routines. They seek a trustworthy alternative to social media news consumption that eliminates the need for fact-checking while maintaining the appealing, digestible format they enjoy on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. The solution should allow them to stay well-informed about various topics (news, entertainment, lifestyle, etc.) through quick, engaging videos from a credible source while providing the flexibility to dive deeper into topics that interest them.
Business Goal
Create a profitable short-form video platform by leveraging mako's trusted content to attract both users and advertisers, generating revenue through a dual-tier advertising model that offers premium placement options. The platform aims to capture the growing short-form video market while maintaining mako's reputation for reliable content, ultimately increasing user engagement and advertising revenue.
Design Thinking Process
The design thinking process helped structure the project by emphasizing user research, iterative prototyping, and testing to ensure the final product met both user and business needs. This method allowed me to empathize with users, identify core pain points, and develop solutions that balanced engagement and reliability.
User Research & Interviews
We conducted interviews with 8 users who primarily rely on social media for news and entertainment. Some also use news apps like N12, Mako, and Ynet.
Key Themes
Key Quotes
"It's frustrating because the video format was perfect—quick, engaging, easy to understand—but I ended up having to cross-check everything on Mako and other news sites to verify if it was accurate."
"Sometimes I wonder how many fake things I've accidentally believed before I developed this habit of fact-checking everything."
"I guess I'm just hoping for some solution that news sources have the format of social media. That would be great."
Affinity Mapping
After the interviews, I created an affinity map and categorized findings into: Habits, Pain Points, Strong Quotes, Inner Feelings, and Experiences. This helped in identifying key issues that needed addressing, ensuring the final design targeted the most impactful user concerns.
Pain Points
Once we deeply understood the problem space, we prioritized the most impactful pain points affecting both users and the business.
Setting KPIs
KPIs played a crucial role in measuring success, ensuring we focused on both user satisfaction and business growth.
Some Key KPIs:
User Engagement: Daily Active Users (DAU), Videos Watched per Session
Conversion: Ad CTR, Share to Social, Premium Ad Performance
User Satisfaction: Ratings, Likelihood to Recommend
Business Impact: Revenue per User, Ad Revenue Growth, Content Cost Efficiency
Retention: Session Frequency, 7-Day Retention Rate
Competitive Analysis
Before designing the mockups, I conducted a competitive analysis on TikTok, Instagram, The Washington Post, and other platforms. This helped identify trends, UX patterns, and areas where Mako could differentiate itself while meeting user expectations.
Wireframing & Sketching
Before moving into high-fidelity designs, I created low-fidelity sketches to validate the user flow. A structured user flow ensured the feature was intuitive and enjoyable.
User Testing
With these mockups, I created a prototype using real content and invited users to Keshet HQ for testing.
Key Insights
High Enthusiasm: One user stated: "Bringing the fun of social media to a real news app that I can trust."
Need for Text Support: Some videos lacked clarity, and users needed captions for better understanding.
Content Segmentation: Users wanted a separation between hard-core news and casual content like Travel, Food, and Music.
Visual Design
Once we refined the feature based on testing feedback, we focused on its visual aesthetics. Below are the finalized designs for:
Breaking News short videos
Casual short-form videos
Homepage component
In-feed ads
In Feed Ads
In the next 2 designs, you can see the new ads created specifically for this new feature.
Bumper - the more premium ad that guarantees the user will be exposed to the ad. The feed is locked for 3 seconds (we can change it easily); after that, the user can keep scrolling. We were terrified that this ad would make users leave, but according to our data, it doesn't affect the users.
Native - looks and behaves like a regular video with a disclaimer that this is an ad and there is a CTA button.
Home Page Component
To promote this feature and enhance accessibility for our users, this component displays the latest videos. They also autoplay on the homepage (on mute) to increase its appeal.
Conclusion
This short-form video feature successfully bridges the gap between engaging content formats and reliable news. It enhances user engagement, increases retention, and provides a new revenue stream for mako. Moving forward, the feature will evolve based on continuous user feedback, expanding personalization options while ensuring credibility and accessibility.
What's Next?
To further improve the feature, I plan to:
Enhance Personalization: Introduce an AI-driven recommendation system that dynamically adjusts content without creating algorithm bubbles, ensuring users get both relevant and diverse news.
Improve Accessibility: Add support for multilingual captions and audio summaries to cater to a broader audience, including those with visual or hearing impairments.
Expand Interactivity: Implement interactive elements such as polls and comment overlays, encouraging user engagement beyond passive watching.
Refine Content Categorization: Further separate hard news from lighter content, providing users with customizable filters to control their feed preferences.
With these improvements, the feature will continue to evolve, providing a seamless and enjoyable short-form video experience while maintaining mako’s reputation as a trusted news source. It enhances user engagement, increases retention, and provides a new revenue stream for mako. Moving forward, the feature will evolve based on continuous user feedback, expanding personalization options while ensuring credibility. With over 1M daily views and growing ad revenue, this project demonstrates the power of blending strong UX principles with real user needs to create a product that’s both engaging and trustworthy.
Thanks
I want to thank all the people who worked hard on this project. The Product Manager, the UX/UI designers, the CMS team, the developers team, the QA team, and the content team.
