Entertainment / ABC News

One of the world’s leaders in media releases a premier app across platforms.

ABC News is one of America’s largest and most trusted news sources. As theUS elections drew closer, ABC News wanted to put its best foot forward with a highly polished, stable, and palatable application. ABC News and TribalScale partnered to build a best in class mobile app on both iOS and Android.

ABC News is one of America’s largest and most trusted news sources. Going into the 2016 election year, ABC News wanted to put their best foot forward with a highly polished, stable, palatable mobile application for iOS and Android.

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Challenge

The business problem

ABC News needed a new and improved mobile app, and a digital innovation partner to support them as they iterated through better and better versions. ABC needed:

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Live updates, video streaming, and on-demand content for its users across Android and iOS platforms, with a seamless, 5-star experience throughout.

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Analytics of user behaviour to determine prioritization of feature roadmap.

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A partner that could work with them long term, augmenting their teams to add and improve features, and respond to their needs as they arose around major news events.

Key results

Introduce new content seamlessly with server-side controls

Update and add material without needing to update their app in the future

ABC mobile app is one of the top ranked news apps

Solution

The business solution

ABC News chose TribalScale for our team’s experience in Agile development and extreme programming, and our full-stack development offering. Agile methodology emphasizes user feedback, rapid iterations, and flexibility. As such, we were able to offer ABC an approach to their project that would allow them to give feedback as development progressed, ensuring that the product was exactly what they wanted, and new releases were brought to market quickly.

AGILE & LEAN APPROACH

Throughout our work with ABC News, we had a dedicated team to manage backlog, prioritize new features, determine best-in-class technologies, and help drive business requirements.

TECH STACK

We improved the codebase by cleaning up the source code repository and dependency management. We also wrote new classes and slowly refactored mature components of the codebase into the new languages; this allowed us to move ABC News toward a new technology stack.

TEST-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT (TDD)

We introduced ABC News to TDD, allowing for better code quality and increased efficiency. We also helped them refactor their codebase, and moved them from annual to constant and iterative refactoring.

INCREASED USER ENGAGEMENT

The new app offers a variety of ways to consume news, offering users a broader and more engaging experience. These include live video streaming, video autoplay, simultaneous article and video view, audio play through both podcasts and live radio, as well as content personalization.

EVENT SPECIFIC

For the 2018 midterm election we introduced a takeover experience, delivering election-specific features with a consistent user experience on time and on budget.

Technologies

• Swift
• Kotlin
• Outbrain ad integration
• Appboy (Braze) notifications management integration
• And more

Outcome

How the business benefited

ABC is our longest running client and has been with us from the beginning. Since our first engagement, they have renewed our relationship for 12 straight quarterly extensions, releasing multiple products, including new versions of the app across platforms. Our history and quality of work with ABC News has increased the overall performance of their digital department.

We enabled ABC News to introduce new content seamlessly and at scale with server-side controls. This means ABC News can update and add material without needing to update their app in the future, giving them an added element of consistency and ease when delivering up-to-the-minute news to the people who need it. The ABC mobile app is one of the top ranked news apps.

If you have to read the news. This is the app to choose.”

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FEBRUARY 2019

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