Local news for the places people don't live
A six-month, multi-phase research program for the Spectrum News app. It moved the app past ZIP-code segmentation and defined the features it shipped with.
Following more than one location became the app's biggest differentiator.
The problem
Charter owned a network of local news affiliates and had research showing people trust local news more than national news. It wanted one app experience across iOS, web, and connected TV, but had no strategy yet. I was brought in to dig into what people needed and come back with recommendations.
Early prototypes had been designed without research. The main flow made you enter a ZIP code and locked you into news from that one place.
How the research ran
It was a six-month contract, run in phases, each one feeding the next.
Interview series. I had participants join from their phones, walk me through their day, and photograph the spaces and devices where they watch the news, then ran in-depth interviews from there: what they were doing while they watched, who they watched with, how they felt, and what they wanted to know.
Large survey. A survey of about 2,000 people measured how common the interview behaviors were, tested demand for following more than one location, and mapped device preferences. I pulled 14+ candidate features out of the interviews and ranked them with it.
Prototype evaluation. I tested the early prototypes, including how people expected the controls to work and how the app should behave across devices.
Taxonomy research with journalists. The app needed a way to tag stories so people could find what they cared about. I researched how that tagging should be structured with the journalists who’d be using it.
More evaluative rounds. As the design changed, further rounds of testing checked the revised flows and the categories with users.
What we found
The detailed findings belong to Charter. The headline is public: people wanted local news for more places than the one they live in, so the single-ZIP lock-in was ruled out and following multiple locations became the app’s biggest differentiator.
What changed
The research defined and prioritized the feature set with the PM, along with the order to launch channels in (phone, iPad, or connected TV first). The product team owned and staffed the roadmap. The app shipped with the features the research defined.
Outcomes
- 1M+ downloads in the first 8 months, and 360K+ monthly active users.
- iOS App Store rating moved from 4.2 to 4.8.
- By 2024 the platform reached 5M unique mobile visitors and +146% year-over-year connected-TV growth.
The app went on to outperform CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC in local markets in December 2021, and live-stream starts rose 1,685% during the Kentucky tornado coverage. Charter reported both after my contract ended.