Hyundai Motor Company Corporate Journalism: Hyundai Worldwide Global Newsroom UXUI Renewal
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Hyundai Motor Company is striving to build a continuous relationship with the media to establish its leadership in the global market. As a part of these efforts, Hyundai Motor Company successfully revamped the UX/UI of its corporate newsroom website in September 2023. This new newsroom is poised to become a central channel of corporate journalism that conveys Hyundai Motor Company’s brand values and vision.
Hyundai Motor Company, a global automaker, introduced the world’s first mass-produced hydrogen car and luxury brand GENESIS. With a vision of “progress for humanity,” Hyundai leads in tech advancements for a brighter future.
Communication in a Global Market: Hyundai’s Journalism Journey
Utilizing multiple channels is one of efficient ways for companies to approach to the public as a means to deliver their brand values and visions. Corporate Journalism produces and distributes in-depth, authentic content like that of a professional journalist and is one of the main communication activities of companies, along with Brand Journalism, which emphasizes transparency and truthful information delivery as opposed to simple advertising or marketing.
Companies in global markets, especially brand-conscious companies like Hyundai, are constantly challenged with communicating information effectively across various cultures and markets. For it is not easy to communicate the same message to audiences with different characteristics and expectations in different regions and countries, companies are constantly looking for ways to maximize the accessibility and transparency of their information.
Journalists and influencers serve as the main channel for delivering information to the public in their respective regions. Providing them with quick and reliable information is an important activity that is directly related to a company’s brand image. Therefore, companies have dedicated platforms to provide them with press releases and other content.
These platforms are called “Owned Media” and are often referred to as Newsroom or Press Center. It is where the company’s overall activities are disseminated, as well as information about their culture, social responsibility, sustainable activities, new product launches, calendar of major events, and more. Since the content is directly created and managed by the companies themselves, it has the advantage of clearly conveying their brand values and visions and intimately communicating with the media professionals, which has spurred countless companies to build and enhance their owned media.
According to several international surveys*, the media professionals have been actively utilizing the original content, reliable sources of useful information, various multimedia resource and planned news lists such as key event schedules in their corporate newsrooms.
Table – Journalist and Corprate Newsroom
* The State of Journalism 2022(MUCK RACK), 2021 Global State of the Media (CISION)
However, user satisfaction in the automotive companies have been found to be lower than in other industries, which also received similar result in the Heuristic Evaluation conducted by Saltcake, with only a few companies receiving high ratings.
Table – Journalist and Corprate Newsroom
* The State of Journalism 2022(MUCK RACK), 2021 Global State of the Media (CISION)
Hyundai Motor Company is enhancing its PR efforts through its global newsroom and 9 regional newsrooms to align with its new status as the third-largest global sales volume and its recognition as a prominent company in the automotive industry in in 2022.
The global newsroom, which has distributed more than 2,000 press releases since 2010, is the central channel for Hyundai’s global PR activity. However, the againg UXUI, including weak information accessibility, monotonous content organisation, text-oriented press releases, has limited Hyundai’s ability to continuously build the media relationships it aims for.
In response, Hyundai decided to renew the UXUI of its global newsroom.
The initial step Saltcake took in developing an insightful UXUI redesign strategy was to gain a deep understanding of how media professionals want to experience accessing information in the newsroom. As to accomplish, we have conducted a preliminary analysis such as research on leading international cases and conducting interviews with clients and operating agencies.
A Change for Users: Fresh Start for Hyundai’s Newsroom
Despite the complexity and diversity of Hyundai’s newsroom, users have been finding it difficult to quickly reach the information they were looking for. This is because the automaker’s newsroom covers many additional categories of news, including vehicle model-specific news, motorsports, sponsorships, and more.
Newsroom IA Volume Analysis
*Saltcake
The most important thing we did to solve this problem was to introduce a ‘segmented catagorization system’. Categorizing and structuring information is essential for users to quickly find what they are looking for, which became a guide for us to start by systematically classifying and organizing news and information into various categories.
It is also important to note that this categorization system is not only for the convenience of users, but also plays an important role in effectively communicating the company’s brand values and vision, so it may change several times before it is finalized.
However, the segmentation of the catagorization system made the information structure 12 times larger than before. For such a large information structure can cause complexity for users, we proposed the following four UXUI solutions to establish a clear hierarchy and intuitive UI.
01
UI Flow centered
on user journey
02
Unified UI principles
for diversity
03
Organizing content
04
Research for user
-centered design
01. User journey-centered UI flow
The first step in UXUI planning is to accurately understand the purpose and behavior of the users. In particular, one important measure is to ensure that users can quickly find the content or service they are looking for when they approach your website, which requires a hierarchical information architecture (IA) and UI planning that focuses on the user journey.
Users visiting a corporate newsroom have two primary expectations. First, they want to quickly sift through what content is newsworthy or find the press release they are looking for. Second, they want to get rich multimedia material (text, images, video, etc.) instantly. However, most corporate newsrooms simply list press releases by time or topic, which does not provide a satisfying user experience.
Hyundai Motor Company Newsroom User Scenario
*Saltcake
To overcome this, the UXUI planners elaborated an optimized UI flow by separating the user journey of Hyundai Motor’s newsroom into “news navigation” and “resource navigation.” This way, users could focus on their current actions and feel that the website was uncomplicated.
02. Unified UI Principles for Diversity
Standard & Customized UI Structure
*Saltcake
It is often believed that repetition of the same UI can simplify a website with a complex information structure, but it can undermine the diversity of information access. Instead, it is important to have unified UI principles rather than the same UI in these cases because users can easily grasp different information within a consistent UI experience.
Therefore, Hyundai’s newsroom was able to keep the UI simple while maintaining the diversity of information by providing a customized UI for each topic under a unified UI principle on the topic list screen, which accounts for 90% of the total information structure.
03. Organization of Content
A good user experience isn’t just about UI design or accessibility; it’s about having valuable content at its center. During the preliminary analysis phase, the content of Hyundai’s newsroom was broken down into 31 components. As a result, Hyundai had a good set of core components for its press releases.
News Structure Assessment
*Saltcake
However, this abundance of content components was found to be hindering the UXUI renewal because the content was being managed in an operator-centric manner.
In other words, the detailed components of the content were not individually managed as a data base, which had a fundamental limitation of not being able to apply various content curations or provide users with organized content.
Assessment Element
*Saltcake
Recognizing this issue, the UXUI planning team worked to address it throughout the project. UI wireframes, storyboards, content maintenance guides, design guides, and more all sought to address this issue, especially considering the development environment of the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Component.
04. User-Centered Design Research
The roles of UXUI planners and UX designers are different but complementary. Planners focus on the components of the content and UI policies, while designers shape how users experience the content and complement the UI policies. In some cases, such as the content detail screen of Hyundai Motor’s newsroom, there were multiple goals, such as providing users with a great visual immersion experience while systematically providing various components and convenience features.
In making these user-centered decisions, UX design research reporting has been an important tool to help us anticipate problems and explore different solutions.
UX Design Research – Hero Banner Area Analysis
*Saltcake
The journey of the newsroom: a new conversation between business and media
The UXUI renewal of Hyundai’s newsroom is at the equilibrium point of user expectations and corporate goals. Through this renewal, Hyundai was able to position the newsroom as more than just a source of information, but as the foundation for an ongoing relationship between the company and the media.
Visual Communication in News
Hyundai Motor Company’s newsroom was planned and designed with two key focuses: accessibility and diversity. The materials provided on the main page enhanced active accessibility for visitors throughout the site. The use of rectangular metaphors visualizing Hyundai’s brand identity, along with cubes reflecting various design sizes, contributed to expressing content diversity and richness. Furthermore, media resources are accessible from anywhere on the site, effectively maximizing communication with the press, journalists, and other newsroom visitors.
Our intention was for visitors to Hyundai’s global newsroom not only to engage with Hyundai’s stories but also to develop a strong affinity for the brand. Accordingly, while faithfully following Hyundai Motor Company’s Brand Communication Guide, we established a UX standard design guide featuring a seamless layout and design that naturally expresses content storytelling, applying it consistently across all pages.
Harmonizing Information Accessibility and Convenience
The detailed pages of press releases on Hyundai Motor’s newsroom website are effectively designed from a user experience (UX) perspective. We focused on delivering the core content quickly, enabling users to immediately understand and utilize key information.
Prominent headlines and subheadings highlight the main points, aiding user comprehension and facilitating information absorption. The page layout is divided into several text blocks to ensure a sequential and natural flow of information. This structure allows users to smoothly navigate the content and engage with it more deeply.
Additionally, various user-friendly features are integrated to provide an efficient and pleasant reading experience. This design targets journalists and reporters primarily while also offering intuitive usability for general visitors.
Progress Bar
Visualizing the Currently Reading Section: A progress bar at the top of the screen dynamically indicates the user’s current reading position as they scroll, providing a clear sense of their location within the page.
Convenient Button
Accessibility for Convenient Viewing of Articles and Resources: Features such as viewing images and videos, along with the ability to copy article text, are provided to facilitate easy information gathering for key visitors like reporters and journalists.
Source of the Quote
Providing Sources for Quotations: The origins of quoted phrases and sentences in articles are presented alongside photos and detailed information to enhance the credibility of the articles.
Footnote
Providing Footnotes for Technical Terms and Specific Words on the Left Side of the Relevant Section: Instead of placing footnotes at the bottom of the page as in the traditional format, they are positioned on the left side of the corresponding area to prevent users’ attention from being diverted.
Content Spreading Uncontrollably Fast
The media kit and media cart, easily accessible from every page of the newsroom, are designed to enable users to quickly and conveniently access the media resources they need.
The media kit provides the resources used in each press release and content, while the media cart maximizes efficiency by allowing users to download all added resources with a single click. This UX design enhances the value of the content Hyundai Motor offers and contributes to an overall improved user experience.
Balancing Information Accessibility and Convenience
The detailed pages of press releases on Hyundai Motor’s newsroom website are effectively structured from a user experience (UX) design perspective. We focused on swiftly delivering the core content to enable users to immediately understand and utilize key information.
Prominent headlines and subheads highlight the main points, aiding user comprehension and facilitating information digestion. The page layout is divided into several text blocks to ensure a sequential and natural flow of information. This structure allows users to smoothly navigate the content and engage more deeply.
Additionally, various user-friendly features are integrated to provide an efficient and comfortable reading experience. While this design primarily targets reporters and journalists, it also offers intuitive usability for general visitors.
Prevalent Updates
Providing a direct access route on all pages for visitors who need quick access to specific resources: features such as image, video, and document downloads, along with the ability to add items to a cart, contribute to the rapid dissemination of Hyundai Motor’s content.
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