Design and implementation of an administration portal : A web application interface with focus on accessibility and usability

Abstract: The last few years, giant companies like Facebook and Google have taken over the publishing market by attracting both advertisers and users to their platforms. This has caused smaller news publishers to lose their influence and their independence in the industry. To combat this trend, Newsadoo is on a mission to establish a collaborative news platform that benefits everyone involved. To help fulfill the company’s vision, the platform’s content has to be easily moderated by both Newsadoo and its partners to make sure that it satisfies the users’ needs. This master thesis concerns the design and implementation of a new solution for Newsadoo’s administrative portal, which will allow both internal administrators and external partners to moderate the content in Newsadoo’s main product. The work was done on site at Newsadoo’s office in Linz, Austria, during the fall term of 2019. The project progressed in bi-weekly sprints based on the principles of Lean UX, which were comprised of methods common to projects revolving around interface design and development. These were methods like user flows, site architecture mapping, wireframing, and different forms of testing and evaluation. The project resulted in Newsadoo Backoffice, a user interface with focus on accessibility and usability that facilitates easy moderation of Newsadoo’s main product. Newsadoo Backoffice is also a potential selling point for the company when trying to find new publishing partners to collaborate with, as this new solution also provides partners with useful data and knowledge on their own company’s performance.