Spectrum News™ Politics Hub
// Case Study
Overview
What is Politics Hub?
Politics Hub is a Charter Communications initiative to launch a feature within the Spectrum News App that works as a central destination for exclusive Spectrum News political coverage and civic engagement tools that encourage our customers to stay informed and get involved.
Role
Product Designer
Duration
February 2021 - November 2022
Squad
3 Product Owners
1 Product Manager
1 - 2 Engineering Managers
3 - 8 Mobile Engineers (iOS & Android)
1 - 2 Data Scientists
3 UX Researchers
Ramping Up
Inheriting a year’s worth of materials
Well documented Design Sprint assets
8 hours of user testing videos, scripts & data analyses
Incomplete preliminary sketches and wireframes
Incomplete competitive analysis assets
CivicEngine API samples
Establishing a New Scope
Working with Stakeholders to Create Alignment
Created a Trello card to keep everything organized
Organized assets by date then familiarized myself with the data
Watched all of the user testing videos; read all of the research analyses, familiarized myself with the wireframes & prototype
Identified & documented all of the significant complete & incomplete milestones of the project
Cross-referenced & confirmed completed milestones with my Project Manager
Listed & prioritized acquisition of the incomplete or missing milestones and determined the re-evaluation of stale data
Worked with Stakeholders to flesh out a reasonable roadmap of deliverables for the next quarter
Proposing a New Path
Forging a Roadmap to Get Us Moving
Explored typical NY voter’s historical election habits, measured their engagement over a 4 year period & exposed consumption over engagement behavior
Cross-referenced this data with what we’ve previously learned from our design sprint user testing
Created some wireframes that are both informed by previous user learnings & what we now know about the CivicEngine API output
Derived a new testing & accessibility evaluation plan to test our new assumptions and created a deck to get buy-in & approval from business leadership
Prototyping & Re-testing
Testing phase
Now with business approved designs, new user data, wireframes, flowcharts and overall product alignment - we were ready to begin creating a comprehensive prototype for user testing our hypotheses.
Tools Used
Sketch
InVision
Internal UX Research Team
UserTesting.com
Building the Vision
The Fun Part
With our assumptions now vetted and refined we were able to start ideating on visualizing solutions, iterating on entry-points, overall experiences, redlining specs & kicking off development sprints.
Tools Used
Trusty old sketchbook & pencil
Sketch
Zeplin
Abstract
InVision
A Curveball
Lack of Resources & a Looming Deadline
Just halfway through development our leadership informs us that 40% of our engineers need to be re-allocated to more critical maintenance work.
So now we have to stop, re-evaluate if we can utilize the resources we have left to deliver a scaled down yet effective MVP while trying to move forward - trying losing as little momentum as possible.
Pivoting
Improvising an MVP
Regroup with what little team we have left
Work with Product to determine which tested paths/experiences would net more user value than others
Parking lot all low value paths/experiences
Build, scope and get buy-in for an MVP by filling in the logistical gaps of the remaining happy path and account for API error states
Build & test a new prototype
Use the test data to refine our MVP
Kick off a new development sprint
Launch
Releasing an MVP into the Wild
We confidently rolled out an MVP of Politics Hub in mid Q4 of 2021 to 100% of our user base. With strategically placed tracking triggers we were able to measure effectiveness & test multiple usability metrics in order to see how well our MVP performed.
MVP Results
Steady increase of users who had never used Spectrum News before
Testing revealed that 67% of all Politics Hub users were able to discover & locate local government facilities & events they were unaware of in the past
More testing revealed that users felt more engaged, confident & informed in their local election voting
My wife & I were able to effectively & successfully use the Politics Hub feature to help us feel more informed about our own local elections
Outcome
How did We Do?
Not only did we exceed the expectations of the MVP but we set ourselves up for a successful kickoff to Phase 2 of the project.
Since our Politics Hub MVP launched in Q4 of 2021, users who have engaged with the wide range of inherent features have spent just under 13 minutes per visit in the app.
That’s 10 minutes longer than general visits to the Spectrum News app overall.
Politics Hub is now in its 2nd Phase of development and design. We plan to add the remaining features originally derived in our initial scope. We’re shooting for a launch date set well before November elections of 2022.
