Talkabot Talks: Sam Williams, Sr. Software Engineer at Quartz

This post originally appeared on the the Howdy.ai company blog to promote the Talkabot Conference

*Sam along with the team at Quartz are building solutions to serve the new ways people consume news. Using a text messaging interface, users can easily tune breaking news and long form content to their tastes, and prior to their appears at Talkabot Conference, spoke with us on the changing media landscape and how people can use Quartz to change the way they consume news.*

What are the differences in the way people consume news using the Quartz app?

Readers of the Quartz app get their news in a form similar to text messaging. The reader gets a message from us introducing a story, and we present them with the option to read more (usually in the form of an emoji) or skip to the next news items.

It’s sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure for news.

We also send out notifications that are intended to be more fun and useful than what you might expect from a news app.

What opportunities does the Quartz app create for journalists?

It’s an opportunity to try writing news in a completely different style. They need to write both sides of a conversation, and the tone is different than what you would usually find in a story on our website. It’s also a great opportunity to show off their excellent GIF curation skills.

(J)ournalists need to write both sides of a conversation, and the tone is different than what you would usually find in a story on our website.

Why is a chat based conversational UI for consuming information such a natural fit for consuming news?

Well, for one, it’s just fun. I would say that a chat interface is a natural extension of notifications, which is how this project began. In fact, an early version of the app was just a blank screen, with the only content delivered through notifications.

Chat interface is a natural extension of notifications.

From there we started playing around with different interfaces inside the app, and once we started playing around with a chat interface, it was clear that it would work well as a complement our notifications. Everything is just a short message, whether on your lock screen or inside the app.

Quartz has plenty of options, for news junkies, or casual browsing.

What were the challenges of conveying the information you want to in a messaging interface?

One of the most challenging aspects of building the app was figuring out how we would actually write the content for it. Because this type of writing is so different from a traditional news story, it was important that the interface for writing the content be as close as possible to a messaging interface.

There was no existing CMS for creating this sort of back-and-forth conversation that we wanted, and because there is a logic to how the conversation is supposed to flow (keeping track of what the user has read etc), we also had to come up with an new data model to use when delivering it to the app.

There was no existing CMS for creating this sort of back-and-forth … we had to come up with an new data model to use when delivering it to the app.

Figuring out the tone of voice we wanted for the app was also challenging, and we took advantage of an extended private beta with the whole Quartz staff working on it and getting feedback of what worked well and what didn’t.

Join us Sept 28–29th in Austin, Texas to discuss bots, conversational software and community for the first ever Talkabot Conference. Full track tickets are still available but going fast!

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