Idea Lab

Find the 'Big Carrot' in Your Mobile App

by Adam Klawonn
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

In the past, I've talked about some of the nuances in creating a location-based mobile app. Now I'd like to share some techniques for how we decided what to include in version 1 of the CityCircles mobile app, and how we accomplished what we did, to help you narrow your focus for any future apps you may be thinking about launching. We had one year to complete the project under the Knight Foundation's guidelines. We spent the majority of that deploying and testing, deploying and testing, adjusting, then deploying again to see how the audience responded. We did this on...

• June 20, 2011
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CityCircles Explains How to Make a Killer Mobile App for Transit

by Adam Klawonn
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

What a difference a year makes. Last year, the CityCircles team was solely focused on building an audience for our unique, web-based publishing platform for the Phoenix light rail community. CityCircles has one of the slickest, easiest experiences for posting geo-tagged content (at least we like to think so). That said, think about everything that has happened in the past year from a technology and user experience standpoint. Safe to say that if we had a crystal ball when we filed our Knight Foundation News Challenge application in 2008, we'd have put our focus on the mobile space instead...

• June 2, 2011
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How to Gauge Success Using New Metrics

by Adam Klawonn
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Last week, I met with two people from a non-profit in Phoenix that looks at progressive policies to balance economic development with the environment. Land use and livable communities are two of their key talking points, so it seems logical that they should be aware of a service that encourages and enables people to use light rail to get around the inner city, right? For those unaware, that describes our Knight Foundation-funded project, CityCircles. As we discussed CityCircles during the meeting, the inevitable question arose: How much traffic are you getting? The answer, in all honesty, is not much at...

• July 21, 2010
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Crafting a Simple Elevator Pitch for the Public and Investors

by Adam Klawonn
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

A Knight Foundation grant is a wonderful gift, but in our case at CityCircles (and for many projects), the grant only lasts for one year. Because most of that year may be spent on programming, this gives winners very little time to craft a pitch. By "pitch" I mean: How do you explain this to your audience in 10 seconds or less (i.e., an elevator pitch)? How do you explain this to people who may want to work with you after the grant ends? We've finally found an approach that seems to be working for CityCircles, so let me save...

• June 28, 2010
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How a Test Suite Can Help Your Open Source Project Grow

by Adam Klawonn
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

At CityCircles, we've been fortunate to work with a local developer who is passionate about our project's goal of developing hyper-local communication tools for mass audiences. Our first implementation of that is a platform for light rail passengers in Phoenix, Arizona. That said, one person can't carry the entire load, especially as the project inevitably evolves from its humble beginnings and wire frames. One solution that's worth considering is sinking some funds into a test suite -- a closed environment where other developers who share a vision for the project can develop new features with the approval of the "master"...

• June 4, 2010
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Top 5 Lessons from the Failure of The Zonie Report

by Adam Klawonn
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

Last week, I wrote a blog post on The Zonie Report (TZR), my Arizona news blog, that I was temporarily shuttering it to spend more time working on CityCircles, a Knight Foundation News Challenge project. Since most of you probably haven't heard of TZR, here's a quick recap of my post: In my digital farewell, I talked about why I did what I did, outlined a few things I learned, and shared what I planned to do next. Since then, I realized I should have elaborated more on my lessons learned because I feel they have been misinterpreted. I could...

• March 11, 2010
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Mobile Projects Shouldn't Overlook 'Dumbphones'

by Adam Klawonn
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

This week, CityCircles (formerly Daily Phoenix) attended a lunch event at Arizona State University that allowed us to have one-on-one conversations with college seniors who were interested in our project. (The event is summarized here.) This was a crucial event. ASU has a huge footprint in the Phoenix area because it has 69,000 students. They buzz around the Valley in cars, on bikes, on foot and yes, on light rail. This makes them a huge group for us as potential users and collaborators. As we talked to them, we realized that an assumption we made early on -- one that...

• September 14, 2009
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Help Us Rename the Daily Phoenix Light-Rail Publication

by Adam Klawonn
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

It's been 42 days and counting since the Knight Foundation announced that Daily Phoenix, our hybrid platform to deliver news and information to urban audiences by light-rail stop, won startup funding. Back here in the scorching confines of Phoenix, the interest was immediate. Local TV station KTVK-TV Channel 3 interviewed us on their signature program, Good Morning Arizona. It was an incredible opportunity and an enlightening experience that really helped us out. For those of you who are thinking about doing a new media project or are already working on one, the TV interview format can be a boon as...

• July 31, 2009
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