Rethinking News Audience Needs
When people move to a new community, they have a million questions about their new home. Meanwhile, news organizations serving that community have an interest in “meeting” those new people and converting them into subscribers. The Indianpolis (“Indy”) Star, one of Medill’s Local News Initiative partners has identified this as an opportunity in their coverage area. This project provides the opportunity to work on a real challenge in media innovation and product development. Students will research the needs of newcomers to the Indianapolis metro area and prototype a service to meet those needs. This work will be done in consultation with the Indy Star, with a goal of designing an experiment for them to execute later this year.
Students will get real experience in the work of design research for media product innovation. They will produce artifacts documenting their work, and make a proposal to our partner for how to test the new ideas and further explore the opportunity.