The Bulletin, a mobile news summarization tool for the Bloomberg mobile app
(Launched 2018)
How might we make it easier for people to keep up in “micro” news moments?
In 2018, Bloomberg Digital’s BHIVE team launched The Bulletin, a new Bloomberg mobile feature that allows Bloomberg news readers to get a quick pulse on the most important stories of the moment — all without having to click away from the home feed. The Bulletin was inspired by the needs of our “News Chasers” and builds directly from what we learned from News Break, the experimental news summarization app developed by senior BHIVE engineer David Harding.
After a MVP launch, the Bulletin was released to 100% of Bloomberg’s mobile app audience in September 2018 and continues to be a key driver of engagement in the app experience as of December 2020.
My Role
Researcher, team lead
In 2017, BHIVE developed a news summarization tool that could distill any story from our newsroom into a sentence or less. Though we’d developed an experimental app, it was ultimately not green lit for launch. Our team was tasked with finding a way to integrate the underlying technology into a new experience for our existing website or mobile app.
The Challenge
Research Solution
+ Collaborative ideation and prototyping
+ User research (competitive testing)
+ Usability
+ MVP experiment
Findings
The Bulletin directly responds to key findings from our user-focused research and prototyping process, including:
Keeping up with users in their “micro moments” — The Bulletin provides short story summaries that allow the user to get an overview of what’s important right now in a minute or less during those interstitial moments of the day, in between meetings, in line for lunch
Clearing the clutter — The Bulletin removes already old content from the mix, so users will never see the same story twice, saving them time and reducing the dreaded feeling of seeing old news
Mobile-first experience — an obvious choice for a frequent news user, optimizing our design and experience for mobile meant users could keep up with the news on-the-go, throughout the day
Sense of completion — in quickly learning the latest, users are rewarded with a sense of “finishing” the news
Immediate satisfaction — for those who want even more, The Bulletin provides the active “News Chaser” the option to keep refreshing for new content, helping to fill the void when they’re looking for fresh stories
Impact
Successful MVP refined and launched to 100% of mobile app users in 2018
Saved edit teams 4+ hours a day in manual curation of top news stories
Marked the launch of Bloomberg Media’s first AI-powered news feature
20% used the “refresh button,” those who did, clicked it an average of 4 times each