News Quiz

Gamifying global headlines through voice

Overview

The TRT World News Quiz was a weekly, voice-native trivia experience launched across Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Designed to test knowledge of global current events in a light and accessible way, the quiz positioned TRT World as an early innovator in the voice ecosystem—offering an interactive format that made news more discoverable and engaging through emerging smart speaker platforms.

Introduced as part of the network’s broader innovation strategy, the News Quiz brought editorial depth into a playful format, inviting global audiences to connect with serious news topics through a conversational interface.

The Challenge

The core challenge was to make international news content engaging and habit-forming on devices not built for traditional browsing. This required rethinking journalism through the lens of voice interaction—stripping down complexity while preserving accuracy and balance. The goal was to design a product that delivered editorial value while creating a repeatable user experience across diverse platforms.

Voice Product Strategy & Multichannel Execution

Under Derrick’s leadership, the team developed a smart speaker experience from the ground up, allowing users to initiate gameplay with simple voice commands and respond naturally to multiple-choice questions using speech. Each weekly quiz featured three questions drawn from global headlines, written with a focus on clarity, balance, and geopolitical breadth.

To extend reach beyond voice platforms, quiz content was distributed across TRT World’s digital ecosystem. Web versions were published through interactive quiz tools, while companion content was created for Instagram carousels, animated social posts, and email newsletters—maximizing ROI from a single editorial workflow.

The production pipeline was engineered for consistency, with defined roles for editorial review, voiceover recording, post-production, and platform publishing. Daily coordination ran through Slack-based workflows and CMS integrations, enabling agile collaboration across teams.

In 2019, the product evolved to support smart displays. Enhancements included tappable answer options, responsive visual cards, and improved voice interaction handling. With user permissions, score tracking was introduced—opening the door to future gamification features and deeper personalization.

User Experience

The quiz was intentionally brief—typically running between two and three minutes. The interaction model favored natural language, offered immediate feedback after each response, and encouraged repeat participation through a familiar weekly cadence. The tone struck a balance between informative and approachable, creating a frictionless way to engage with global headlines.

Outcomes

The News Quiz reached users across multiple geographies, with content carefully curated to maintain international relevance rather than over-indexing on any one country’s events. It became one of TRT World’s most recognized voice products, earning accolades including wins in the Actions on Google Developer Challenge.

More than just a smart speaker skill, the quiz became a bridge between editorial content and audience engagement—contributing to weekly brand touchpoints, expanding discoverability, and fueling content repurposing efforts across social and email channels.

What Made It Work

Consistency in production, coupled with a voice-native editorial mindset, was central to the quiz’s success. Rather than adapting from a TV format, the team approached the experience as a standalone product optimized for spoken input, brief attention spans, and smart speaker limitations. A single content stream supported multiple outputs, driving operational efficiency and increasing audience exposure.

Learnings

Designing for voice demanded editorial discipline. By focusing on brevity, conversational clarity, and repeatable workflows, the team achieved higher engagement than more complex formats. The project demonstrated how smart, voice-first design can extend the reach of global journalism—especially when paired with platform-native thinking and operational agility.