Bing News
Help people break their information cocoons
Bing News was the first project I took over after joining Microsoft. It is an essential part of the Bing search engine. When users perform searches, all news-related modules and links are provided by our team.
Although the search engine is a mature product, delivering quality news within it requires specialized expertise. Therefore, my daily work involves continuously optimizing and iterating on Bing News, with goals including achieving better Business growth (DAU) and User experience.
Business Growth
Before - Mar 2023
Added "Top News" and "Explore more news" which overall increased the DAU of the news module.
Mar 2023 - Aug 2023
Changed the card swiping to a list view, making the reading experience more natural for users. Expanded the area for top news to further increase the DAU of the news module. Balanced the visual weight of each news item within the module.
Aug 2023 - Now (2024)
Due to business growth pressure, I changed the news title color from black to "Blue Link" and moved the publisher logo before the news title. Added small image previews to “Explroe more news”, further increasing the DAU of the news module.
User Experience
The above are 2 standalone features maintained by News within Bing. The design occupies the entire top space of the search engine, aiming to provide users with a more immersive news reading experience. I have specially designed unique interaction patterns to ensure a smoother user experience.
While continuously iterating the news module, I also took charge of designing two core features:
News in Bing Chat (now Copilot)
The AI boom in 2023 prompted Microsoft to launch Bing Chat and related capabilities promptly. Within 3 months, Microsoft rapidly rolled out hundreds of new features in Chat, among which the news module I was responsible for stood out as one of the WoW features.
Trending on Bing
I noted that in the China, Japan, and Korea, users are more sensitive to text-based news, whereas in Western markets, users are more responsive to images. I believe this difference is due to the varying information density and text readability in different languages. Therefore, I designed different versions of the user interface accordingly.
How I lock down a good design treatment?
All feature shipments of Bing require a flight test first. The test results must show comprehensive improvements over the previous version before shipping online. As a result, the design team need to put huge efforts on design exploration, striving to find the optimal design solution to meet the stringent shipping requirements.
Fortunately, we can leverage the immense traffic of the search engine to conduct extensive A/B testing. Additionally, Microsoft provides numerous mature professional tools to help us evaluate the effectiveness of design solutions. This allows me to efficiently measure and optimize the user experience, ensuring that every feature released achieves the best possible outcome.
News should be serious
Bing News has very strict requirements for information authority and search neutrality. The principle of providing users with unbiased information is deeply ingrained in the hearts of every news professional. This principle has also changed me.
Over the past year of managing the news product, I have developed very healthy and beneficial information consumption habits. Perhaps you can do the same—turn off algorithmic personalized recommendations on all content platforms and explore a wider variety of information. As I mentioned at the beginning, I hope more people can break out of their information cocoons. For example, in the feature below, I designed a "Related News" function for all top stories, allowing users to access a dedicated page for comprehensive coverage.
Bing News was the first project I supported after joining Microsoft, a company vastly different from my previous employer. At Microsoft, I experienced a unique commitment to design precision and user experience. A very specific example is that at Microsoft, 70% or more of the design proposals never go live. Designers spend a significant amount of time exploring both bold and dynamic design solutions, reminiscent of my university days when I relentlessly pursued design excellence. During this process, I have a large amount of design output that I cannot directly share publicly (such as various design explorations involving news and artificial intelligence). If you are interested in learning more, please contact me.
In 2024, after a year of involvement, I handed over the Bing News project to my colleagues for continued maintenance and transitioned to working on the Copilot Content Ecosystem, to optimize content experience for Microsoft’s AI platform .