Product Development: TR Mobile App

A digital replica of our long-standing magazine product

A digital replica of our long-standing magazine product

Background:  Technology Review spends a lot of money on postage/shipping (and replacing lost issues) of magazines to international alumni. The business side of TR tasked the product team with reducing these costs by offering a digital app as a replacement for sending printed copies overseas.


Project requirements and early insights:

  • The existing experience for our “digital” subscribers of delivering a PDF each issue left something to be desired, the new solution must be an improvement

  • The solution couldn’t further tax our already resource-strapped editorial/design staff

  • Developer involvement must be minimal because dev resources were tight with the redesign

  • Desired launch was ASAP

Project scope: Find a solution that offers a better user experience for digital magazine delivery than a PDF, which is easy for the editorial to set up for each issue with little to no ongoing development bandwidth required from the dev team

Approach:  

  1. Researched other digital issue magazine apps in the market

  2. Worked with Art Director to understand current print production process for magazine issues

  3. Learned more about digital delivery history from Lead Engineer (who has been at TR for 13 years)

  4. Research 3rd parties that produce apps or digital editions and chose Woodwing Digital Services

Result: We "soft launched” a mobile app in time for the March/April magazine release date. We continue to learn from its usage and improve our offering with the vendor and internally.

My role: 

  • Stakeholder interviews

  • Project management

  • 3rd party research, selection, and management

  • Quality Assurance

The team: 

  • Emily Luong: Art Director

  • Shaun Calhoun: Lead Engineer

  • Alli Chase: Project Manager

Reference: