Hometown: Local news, reimagined

Co-founder, sole designer (2020)

My co-founder Rick and I created Hometown to bring a far superior user experience to local news. We hoped it could help people become more informed and involved in their communities.
Over the 18 months we worked on this product, we shipped 5 major iterations of the app based on frequent input from users.

Short Video Demo

Results

Hometown had a 5-star App Store rating over its life and rave reviews from users. We also received recognition from news industry leaders for creating something truly new and helpful.

Where is it now?

Despite developing an innovative take on local news (which we hope others will copy) Hometown wasn't able to find its place in the market. We had to shut it down in mid-2020.

Design Goals

  1. Create a news experience that is quick to stay up-to-date on, but that also allows you to dig into the context and history of an issue.
  2. Develop news content modules of different types to make news production more efficient, critical for an industry with limited budgets and staff.
  3. Combine aggregated and original news content in order to provide a more complete picture of what's going on in the community.

Read more

  1. The Hometown Backstory

Ljuba Youngblom

HomeContactLinkedIn

Copyright © 2024 Ljuba Youngblom