The brief
The Bristol Cable is an independent media company and cooperative that provides local news through independent investigative journalism, in print and via its website.
The Cable team approached us to produce a tool that would allow their journalists to better include the skills, insights and knowledge of their reader-members as sources for the Cable’s reporting.
Our solution
We devised and ran a three day design sprint with the Cable team and Outlandish designer. We worked through a number of processes including:
- discovery and research
- target user work and user needs mapping
- value propositions
- topline user journeys
- concept creation (and consolidation)
- … and finally a roadmap for delivering the Minimum Viable Product and subsequent iterations of the tool.
After the sprint, our designer continued, taking the outputs to design a mid-fidelity, interactive prototype (see above) that demonstrated the main journey a journalist would take in sourcing members for an in-progress story.
A subsequent user testing session teased out aspects that users liked, disliked and struggled with, as well as areas where the concept could be further improved.
Impact and going forward
We’re pleased to say that the sprint moved the Bristol Cable team forward in thinking about how local media organisations can better build on the value of their reader-members.
Furthermore, the outputs have been adopted by the European Correctiv. Building on the outputs to design a new software-as-a-service product that empowers local media organisations across Europe to develop their content in collaboration with their communities.
