Case Study · 01

CBS News × AAU

A real pitch to CBS News on how to reach Gen Z. I was the only UX/UI designer on the team. The presentation landed well.

My role
Sole UX / UI Designer
Type
Client Pitch Deck
Client
CBS News
Team
Ching An Yu, Sydney Harmon, Quynh Chi Nguyen, Tiarne Liu
Overview

How it worked

AAU's Future Agency pairs student teams with real clients. Our brief from CBS News was to figure out why Gen Z isn't watching and propose something concrete about it. The team handled research, strategy, and presentation. I owned all the UX and UI: the concepts, the mockups, the visual system the whole deck was built around. We presented to people at the network at the end of the semester and got strong feedback across the board.

The problem Gen Z gets news from Instagram and TikTok. Broadcast television is not part of their routine, and CBS had no clear way in.
What I designed The tablet-style AR interface anchors use on set, the AR voting results display, the Steve Jobs compositing concept, and the full Friend App with four screens and a home screen widget.
Outcome Presented to CBS stakeholders. The response was positive across all seven proposals.
Our Approach Research → Strategy → Concept Development → UI Mockups → Final Presentation
CBS News project
Research Insight

Where does Gen Z actually get news?

We ran a survey with 50 AAU students before touching any design. The goal was to understand real habits, not assume them. A few things surprised us.

69.4%
check Instagram before anything else for news
87.8%
say short videos and reels are the most engaging format
34.7%
use TikTok as a primary news source
32.7%
go to YouTube for news content
53.1%
still read articles and essays when they care about a story

Based on survey responses from 50 AAU students, Fall 2025.

Target Audience

Who we were designing for

Age
Gen Z, 17–26
Where
Primarily the U.S.
Urban and campus environments, San Francisco as a focus
Daily habits
4–6 hours a day on social media
Sports, memes, pop culture, short news clips. They share things constantly because it signals what they care about to their group chats.
News behavior
Short, visual, and easy to absorb
Traditional broadcasts feel like homework. They want to know what happened, not sit through a 30-minute program to find out.
What they trust
Honesty over production value
They respond to directness. A polished anchor in a suit reads as corporate, not credible.
Gen Z audience

Big Idea

Through
the Eye

CBS already has the eye as its symbol. The name comes from the three things our pitch kept returning to: truth in the reporting, trust between the anchor and the audience, and transparency in how the news is made. Gen Z doesn't want a broadcast. They want to see inside.

Proposals

The proposals

We broke the pitch into seven concepts across studio design, AR graphics, audience interaction, and physical activations. Each one could stand alone, but they were designed to work together.

Proposal 01 · Studio Redesign

KPIX Set 2.0

CBS uses AR and green-screen in their current studio, but the result still feels like a news set. KPIX Set 2.0 proposes a warmer, more spatial environment with natural light tones, depth, a sense of place. The studio feels like somewhere, not a void with graphics on top of it.

Proposal 02 · Set Graphics

The Tony Stark Swipe

A gesture-based interaction inspired by Tony Stark allows anchors to swipe, expand, and move digital elements with natural hand motions. This creates a futuristic, intuitive way to control AR graphics on air.

Proposal 03 · Field Reporting

Studio Teleporting

Green-screen capture places reporters inside any location (past or present). A reporter could stand at Union Square while broadcasting from the studio. It's not new technology. The point was to actually use it as a storytelling tool, not just a backdrop.

Green Screen Setup

Proposal 04 · Archival Storytelling

Bringing Back SF's Icons

Local news covers stories that are inseparable from the people who shaped the city. This concept uses digital compositing to bring those figures back into the conversation.

The demo we built imagines Apple's 100th anniversary. A CBS anchor stands on set with a digitally reconstructed Steve Jobs, blending archival footage with a 3D virtual environment so they appear in the same frame. The anchor can reference his words, his vision, and what it would mean today.

The same approach applies to Harvey Milk, Maya Angelou, and others whose stories are still being written in San Francisco. Not as a gimmick, but as a way to give context that no 60-second social clip can.

Proposal 05 · Audience Engagement

Based on our research, Gen Z spends a huge amount of time on their phones, constantly switching between Instagram, TikTok, and other social apps. At the same time, CBS is still mainly experienced as a traditional TV broadcaster. So our goal here is to build a bridge between those two worlds: bring CBS onto the devices Gen Z already live on, and then bring them back to the live news experience. The next few slides show a simple interaction flow that invites participation, real-time feedback, and a closer relationship between CBS and young viewers.

Social Voting

We start with a social media question that appears on Instagram, TikTok, or inside the CBS app. For this prototype we chose the question: ‘If San Francisco loses Karl the Fog, does it lose part of its identity?’ Karl the Fog is the nickname people in San Francisco give to their fog, and it even has its own Instagram account with a big following. Because Gen Z already know Karl from memes and social media, this topic feels fun and familiar, but it is still about local identity and climate. Viewers can vote directly where they already are, without leaving their favorite apps.

Proposal 06 · App Feature

The Friend Widget

I designed the Friend App as four screens: a main feed with For You, Groups, and Nearby tabs; a fact-check view with credibility ratings; a Find Your Friends map; and a home screen widget. The widget puts a live CBS headline on the lock screen without requiring anyone to open an app.

📱 FRIEND APP + WIDGET Mockup placeholder

Proposal 07 · Physical Activation

Out-of-home experiences extend CBS beyond the newsroom and into the real world. By using immersive tech like projection mapping and AR/VR pop-ups, CBS transforms public spaces into storytelling platforms, bringing news, culture, and community together in ways people can touch and participate in.

Projection Mapping at Union Square

Projection mapping transforms San Francisco’s Union Square into an immersive storytelling space. CBS turns buildings and walkways into dynamic visual canvases, allowing news, culture, and community stories to unfold in a shared public environment that brings viewers closer to the narrative.

01 / 07
Next Steps

If this moved forward

01
Design and build out the KPIX 2.0 stage environment
02
Prototype the tablet-style AR graphics panel in a real broadcast test
03
Run a green-screen shoot on location with local community members
04
Source the AI compositing tools needed for archival figure recreation
05
Launch voting polls on CBS's social channels tied to a specific broadcast
06
Build the Friend Widget into the existing CBS app as a beta feature
07
Produce the Union Square projection mapping event with a local media partner
08
Negotiate the SF MOMA partnership for the AR/VR pop-up
09
Track Gen Z engagement across every touchpoint and use it to prioritize the next build
Reflection

Looking back

Being the only designer on the team
Every visual decision was mine to make. That was a lot of creative freedom, but it also meant I had to justify choices to teammates who weren't thinking in UX terms. I got better at explaining design decisions in plain language, not just showing what looked good.
What I'd push further
The proposals that worked best were the ones grounded in real behavior, not aspirational tech. If I had more time, I'd spend less effort on the AR studio concepts and more on the voting system and the widget, because those are the things Gen Z would actually use tomorrow.
Next Project
Smart Ritual →
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