Case Study · Bell Media / CTV News
Local Video Discovery
Redesigning the Local tab experience to surface newscasts and video content that was buried, cutting task time by 68% and pushing usability scores from failing to near-perfect.
Case Study · Bell Media / CTV News
Redesigning the Local tab experience to surface newscasts and video content that was buried, cutting task time by 68% and pushing usability scores from failing to near-perfect.
01 · Problem
The CTV News app's Local tab was the primary destination for users in their city. Local top stories, local newscasts, and local video content all lived there. But the tab was fragmented, split across multiple sections that required users to switch views to find what they were looking for.
Local newscasts, one of the most-watched content types on the platform, were hidden behind a section the majority of users never discovered on their own.
Before: local newscasts and featured video were hidden behind section switching in the Local tab
Baseline usability study
02 · Landscape
Before exploring solutions, I looked at how other news and video apps handled surfacing time-sensitive, location-relevant video content without making users hunt for it.
CBC News
CNBC
03 · Exploration
I wireframed several structural models before landing on a feed architecture with three named sections stacked vertically. The goal was to collapse section-switching into a single scrollable path.
Early wireframes exploring the Local tab structure and scalable content patterns across tabs
Leading article cards from the user's local market. Familiar entry point, matching the existing mental model.
A horizontal video rail with the most-watched and most-recent clips from that market. Visually distinct from article cards.
Full newscasts from that city's CTV station: noon, evening, and late news. Always visible, no switching required.
04 · Refinements
Based on internal testing and feedback, the Local tab moved from a section-switched experience to a unified, scannable feed. Here's the before and after:
Before: local newscasts and featured video required navigating into a hidden sections drawer
After: Local tab organized into one scrollable feed. Top Stories, Top Videos, and Local Newscasts always visible.
05 · Results
After launch, we re-ran the SUS benchmarking study with the same task set. The results across every measure shifted significantly.
Usability benchmark summary, before and after the redesign
The core finding: the content wasn't broken; the structure around it was. Surfacing what users wanted in the natural path of the feed was the fix. No new features, no added complexity. Just clearer hierarchy.
06 · Reflections
This project reinforced how much structure drives outcomes in a news app. When local programming is buried, people don't miss it because they aren't capable. They miss it because the interface doesn't make it visible at the moment they're scanning for it.
The module patterns we established, including Top Videos and the city-switching model, are now reusable across other Bell Media experiences. That consistency reduces future design and engineering effort and helps teams ship updates faster without re-teaching users how to navigate.