When a reader launches Rumi, she immediately enters a focused reading environment without distractions. Consider this as Readers Mode 2.0.
Notes allows the reader to highlight and annotate freely. This will activate her critical thinking skills, and help her better recall evidence when needed.
Probe acts as a guide to help the reader define the type of article she is reading by asking thought provoking questions.
Filter puts the power of advanced AI technology in the hands of the reader. It reveals the amount of evidence and speculation in an article.
The reader can choose to save her hardwork as PDFs, which will include all of her notes and selections.
News Literacy is not a hard concept to define. The challenging part was how we can easily equip people with such a skill. We researched, looked at detailed definitions of news literacy, and came up with many ideas — social media campaigns, websites, brochures, etc. Most of them do create awareness, but that’s not enough. We believed there had to be actions, as most people learning by doing.
“It has to be something you can use quickly.” After we pondered forms and goals through the lance of The New York Time’s brand voice, we landed on the idea of creating an accessible educational tool, a web extension, which has the easiest access possible.
Rumi’s interface is simple and straightforward, as it should be. We went through a few variation to make sure the reader can focus on the article while easily navigate all the tools she needs.
Rumi’s visual language borrows from The New York Times’ existing branding. It echoes The New York Times black letter wordmark, which has distinct contrasts in the letter forms.
Rumi is short for Ruminate, defined as thinking deeply about something or chewing the cud carefully. We chose cow as the symbol, since it’s a great metaphor for digesting information detailedly and attentively.
Symbol designed by Lucy Wang.