Hans Haacke, News, 1969

OptOut News is a digital news ecosystem that's entirely independent and reliable, an alternative to the dominant corporate and legacy media. With over 6,000 total newsletter subscribers that open their weekly newsletter at a rate 40% above industry-average, the team seeks to shift into new environments and platforms. The OptOut News beta app features content from 200 independent news sites, podcasts, and video channels.

Challenge
OptOut seeks to leverage a network of 200 independent news providers across verticals in a new iOS environment. What do our paying subscribers want from a news app, and who are the new users who will join our ecosystem with a new app?

Work
Conducted research with internal and external stakeholders to identify target early users and discover opportunities for growth and development.

Process
I conducted research with four core stakeholder groups to uncover opportunities for the future of the Optout ecosystem. I recruited, designed research methods and scripts, and interviewed 30+ participants from the following segments:

Leadership from outlets represented in the Optout network of media publications
Journalists from within Optout’s network and beyond
Subscribers of Optout’s newsletter
People who have interacted with Optout’s social media or app but are otherwise unfamiliar with the ecosystem

All research was organized and analyzed using Dovetail.

Research explored current news consumption behaviors and attitudes, use of aggregators, if at all, and beliefs around how often, why and in which media users choose to consume news.

I created personas that delved into demographic information, digital (mobile and web) habits and routines, and news preferences based on interviews I conducted. I also did a literature review and collected visual research to create a report about high-level media industry trends.

In particular, desire for personalization, lack of trust in media platforms, and wariness of corporate disinformation and user misinformation were themes that came up continuously.

Upon finishing the report, I conducted a collaborative workshop with internal stakeholders to discover value propositions and design principles based on desired outcomes.

I mocked-up concepts based on design principles and value propositions.

This research also proposed expanded content verticals that resonated with early target users, two app features to increase retention, and marketing positioning.