Case Study 01.

The Globe and Mail app

Keeps users informed around-the-clock with world-class, award-winning news, commentary and analysis with this native mobile app experience.

Project Overview

The Problem

Design and maintain features of the iOS and Android versions of the app and seek opportunities to engage and younger audiences.

The Solution

Engage existing subscribers and non-subscribers and attract newer younger audiences by creating personalization features.

The Tools

Miro, Figma and Photoshop.

My Role

Lead Product Designer, Usability, Accessibility + QA Testing

The Team

The Core Team: The Globe and Mail’s Native Apps (1 Product Manager, 1 iOS Developer, 1 Android Developer, 2 QA Analysts, 1 Scrum Master).
Partners and Stakeholders: News editorial department, Marketing/Branding department, Ad Revenue team, Analytics team, UX and Digital Products department (web product designer, front and back end developers).
Analytics provider: Sophii (an internal analytics team).

Discover & Define: UX Research

Survey

Following a feature from the Android app, I created and ran a survey linked from within the Android app for a week to discover how many people engaged with the “Financial Centre”. We found that not too many users were using the new “Financial Centre” section. We weren’t sure if users were not engaged with this new section in the app space through the lens of a user.

Key Findings

Before I started a third-party vendor ran a user study and designed the “Financial Centre” for Android. After running my own survey, the findings did not match the previous user study. From the survey, users were not engaged with the new “Financial Centre” and some did not even know it existed. For iOS, we created a similar new section however we tailored it to be more personal.

Requirements Gathering

Meeting with stakeholders we started white boarding ideas and prioritize what we assume our audience would want from an Olympics app. We wrote down features on sticky notes and did a dot-voting exercise to determine what we want on the homepage of the app. We then placed them in priority sequence according to the stakeholder however judging from past olympics we felt as a team certain features of content should be higher up.

As we neared the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo olympics, our requirements became clearer and we had to pivot to focus purely on current functionality. We revised the mocks and prototypes and worked closely with the developers to understand what UX improvements we could make with the time left until launch.

Develop & Deliver: Ideate, Design and Test

User Flows, Sketching + Wireframing

I created user flows to illustrate entry points to certain specific types of content such as top stories, video (Live and On Demand), Schedule, Results, Medals and Individual Sporting Events. Creating a user flow diagram provided comprehension of what the information architecture could be and allowed everyone to be on the same page whether it was a stakeholder or a developer.

After having buy-in with what the potential user flow may be from the stakeholders I started sketching what the layout would be like but immediately moved to wireframing where display ads would be placed in the layout as this was a required business need from sponsorships. These had to be shown first to the revenue stakeholders to get feedback on what we can sell. From here the Apps team proceeded to meet with the Sports department stakeholders for requirements in terms of content. We met with them on a regular basis until the opening ceremonies so that we could continuously refined our ideas while getting input from the developers on what is technically feasible.

As we neared the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo olympics, our requirements became clearer and we had to pivot to focus purely on current functionality. We revised the mocks and prototypes and worked closely with the developers to understand what UX improvements we could make with the time left until launch.

Key Findings

We’ve had many uncertainties and unknowns with the possibility of the cancellation of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games after a postponement in 2020 due to COVID-19 concerns. One thing for sure is that even though there is a pandemic happening the love of sport, community and national pride for Team Canada is always been there. Canadians want to follow the Olympics and see how our athletes are doing while they strive for the best by streaming live events, checking out schedules when they are competing as it was quite difficult with the Olympic Games being in Tokyo.

We found that our audience was truly engaged from user feedback through Zendesk, the App Store, Play Store and through our continuous user interviews.

For the upcoming Beijing 2022 Olympics in February 2022, we are currently working on addressing some of these users’ pain points such as improving the schedule, send alert reminders when an event is coming up, medal standings at a glance up higher, following a particular athlete, sport or country, potentially hide game and match outcome spoilers and integrate more Paralympic Games content.

The numbers…

CBC MARKS RECORD-BREAKING DIGITAL AUDIENCES FOR TOKYO 2020, WITH CBC ALSO RANKING AS THE MOST-WATCHED TV NETWORK IN CANADA THROUGHOUT THE GAMES

Canadians stream 37 million video views on CBC digital platforms during Tokyo 2020, up 62 percent over PyeongChang 2018

“CBC’s digital and streaming platforms including CBC.ca, the CBC Olympics App and CBC Gem grew historic, record high audiences over the course of the Games, with Canadians streaming more than 37 million video views since the beginning of Tokyo 2020, up 62 percent over PyeongChang 2018, which had a similar time difference of 11 to 16 hours for viewers in time zones across Canada. Additionally, live views made up 61 percent of all video views, highlighting the increasing popularity of live streaming on CBC digital platforms, and Connected TVs accounted for about 68 percent of the total time spent streaming Tokyo 2020 content on CBC Gem. In total, Canadians consumed nearly 17 million hours of digital Olympic content on CBC digital platforms, with time spent reaching the highest one-day total on record for CBC on Friday, August 6, the day of the women’s soccer gold medal game.”

Digital Data Source: Adobe Analytics, 2021

News article: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/cbc-tokyo-olympics-ratings-1.6135953
Press Release: OlympicGamesTokyo2020_CBC-Audience-Release.pdf

The Globe and Mail app consistently remains in the top four (4) app in the Magazines & Newspapers - Free Apps category.
(App Store and Play Store)