Your Daily Briefing
Student email inboxes are brimming with announcements vying for attention. “Your Daily Briefing” seeks to rise above the noise: A daily Instagram story highlighting what students need to know from the Oregon State University Honors College as they head out that door.
Newspapers I stumbled upon at the Meow Wolf art experience! One way a briefing is provided.
One morning while listening to “The Daily”, I realized that “The Daily” had become a part of my morning routine. This is exactly what I wanted for Honors College updates!
What does the news even look like?
I began looking for inspiration, eventually finding it in the most unexpected of places: a New York Times podcast. Audio! What an intriguing concept, except it was a little hard for a handful of us on the communications team to record and produce a podcast each day.
There was something else, though. I was fascinated with the way The Times’s newest series, “The Daily,” ended with a “here’s what else you need to know today” segment after a deep dive.
That was just the frame I needed.
This line from each episode of the “The Daily” provided a frame for approaching the challenge of breaking down a variety of Honors College news and happenings.
What did my peers think?
Was Instagram the place to meet students in the moment?
In conversations with my peers, I learned that many students simply forgot to sign up for an opportunity or show up for an event. While the weekly email was widely regarded as being informative, it was too easy to fall out of the loop by the middle of the week in the midst of assignments and endless midterms.
Yes! The same year as I was tinkering on a daily Honors College briefing, as a communications team we briefly floated the idea of Snapchat to reach a younger audience. I noticed the research wasn’t supporting the investment to build this non-existent channel for the college. In fact, within eight months of launching, Instagram reported 200 million daily users on Stories, compared to 160 million daily users on Snapchat. Students (myself included!) were using Instagram Stories as a way to stay connected, and the use of Stories as a news channel wasn’t there yet.
Iterating an identity
Another priority was giving order to information. These updates could get lost just as easily as an email newsletter, so to make it stick, a hierarchy that featured headlines was necessary.
One piece of feedback I received was that the typography felt distracting. In pursuit of sharing information in a prominent way, I had introduced too many different weights. I went back to the drawing board to simplify how I was using different weights, and for what specific purpose. I also realized that the color palette might be contributing to diminished readability.
I was fascinated with UI elements and taught myself how wayfinding might provide context — even in something as simple as an Instagram Stories daily briefing. Digital breadcrumbs on the bottom offered context and a quick visualization on the length of the day’s briefing; rounded corners brought warmth. Friendly copy built trust, while colors also helped craft an experience and became a way to signal types of updates. My favorite tidbit was the accumulation of cards in the background as another signal to the reader that you were making it further in the daily briefing!
The priority has always been being that friend who knows what’s up. In addition to the use of highlighting to facilitate skimming and screenshotting programming information, a separate greeting page featuring today’s date helped set the tone for the briefing experience (and, we could all use a reminder for today’s date!) Additional regular sections included an inspiration quote to start the day and a reminder that “hey, we see you, but you’ve got this,” at the end which reiterated that the Honors College was rooting for your success. Truly!
One of the neatest aspects of the design system was watching how the daily briefing could adapt to new uses. As word spread across the Honors College community, the daily briefing became a spot to introduce regular features, such as featuring resources developed in collaboration with the Honors College’s Student Engagement team. I also partnered with staff to spotlight new classes as registration opened. The daily briefing also branched out to include live reporting during events. Initially I covered these personally, but I developed a design that complemented the photography and video the Honors College staff and student ambassador teams shared in real-time.
“Your Daily Briefing” sparked conversations beyond the Honors College community, and importantly, student participation rates increased. What I didn’t expect was resonating beyond current students — we also saw high engagement among families and alumni. I believe a part of this success is our encouraging and responsiveness to send us a DM directly. This was before link clicks were available in Instagram, so we asked readers to “swipe up” and share a quick thought, inspiring quote or even updates they may have.
One of my first priorities was making sure the daily briefing always carried a sense of weight and empathy. This would be one of the first interactions a student has in their day. Student life can be so stressful at times, so imagine if the experience is friendly one? “Rise and shine” was born and became the standard greeting for the story. Emoji brought necessary warmth.
↑ 1,000%
increase in Honors College Instagram audience
”Your Daily Briefing” was a large factor in increasing Honors College digital engagement across channels. On most days, some 50-75% of our audience viewed our story. Incredibly, most readers tapped all the way through.
Lessons learned
While Instagram’s Story feature is a powerful way to build relationships with audiences, as social media evolved even in the course of building “Your Daily Briefing,” we need to recognize that a portion of students aren’t on social media regularly. That, and social media is also a slippery slope — is it ethical to expect students to engage with us when research is showing how the social media experience itself can be detrimental? How can we translate our success here and complement through another channel or medium?
Thinking some more, maybe the answer is a physical experience. For example, when students walk into a Honors College class, could we ask professors to have a daily-brief-style update on the screen?
There are a lot of assets involved in the production of “Your Daily Briefing,” and this process required me to develop a template that was ready for use if someone needed to step in (and when I graduated!)
As word spread campus, many campus communicators reached out to collaborate and understand our success. I strongly believe that my unique student perspective helped shape the voice that became “Your Daily Briefing”. The takeaway is more time spent listening and understanding the people we design for, rather than jumping into the newest medium straightaway.
