HA Sammen
Category: Internship
Collaborators: Dedicated colleagues at Kilde, Hamar.
Supervisor: Cathrine Skarbø Eldorhagen
Subject: Design Internship
When: August 2023 - November 2023 (5th semester)
Hamar Arbeiderblad (HA) is a newspaper founded in 1927, based in Hamar, and part of Kilde AS. With a focus on local news, politics, sports, and culture, the newspaper is an indispensable source for community engagement and information about the local area.
Kilde AS initiated HA Sammen, a pilot project that seeked to investigate the relation between HA subscribers’ receiving benefits through a loyalty program and subscription retention.
About Hamar Arbeiderblad
Task to be completed
As an intern at Kilde AS’ TEK-department, I was included in the pilot project HA Sammen to evaluate the effects of the loyalty program. The research question was:
"Does HA Sammen create value for subscribers in such a way that it increases the likelihood that they, beyond editorial content, see clear benefits in becoming subscribers, and clear benefits in remaining subscribers over time?"
My role was to contribute to answering this research question through prototyping and testing.
How I solved the task
The research and ideation phase had already been completed at my arrival.
Initially, I created an online survey to find out if a loyalty program like HA Sammen affected HA’s readers’ participation in events. Based on the results from this survey, I started creating a Figma prototype for HA Sammen.
After launching, a survey was placed on the event site to collect the readers’ opinions on the program. The site also contained a pop-up review and a thumbs up/thumbs-down review on each event.
After participating on an event, each participant received another survey on e-mail immediately after the event. The event organizers received a survey to evaluate the loyalty program as well. To add some qualitative data I did in-depth interviews to evaluate whether the pilot project HA Sammen was a success or not.
The result
Findings
Participants attend events to be entertained and to socialize. They prefer receiving discounts/offers in email/newsletters, using a discount code (SMS/e-mail) to activate their discount. A dedicated app is also suggested.
Only 6 out of 10 state that HA Sammen is a contributing factor to retaining their HA subscription.
The overall quality of the newspaper and subscription costs are more significant in determining cancellations than a loyalty program like HA Sammen.
The primary reason subscribers want to use HA Sammen is to get more value for their money and a better overall subscription experience.
Organizers are almost entirely positive about HA Sammen. To them, HA Sammen increase the participation/customer base and visibility.
Summary
Overall, the results indicate that HA Sammen has the potential to meet users' desires for increased value, but there is room for improvement in accessibility, presentation, and promotion of events.
Research has shown that subscribers find it far more important that the newspaper fulfills its societal mandate and delivers high-quality journalism than receiving offers through a loyalty program like HA Sammen.
Organizers also experience several benefits with HA Sammen, but there is room for improvement in how the events are promoted.
HA Sammen prototypes
Reflections
As a newcomer at Kilde, I gradually became more comfortable and independent in my role, which is evident in my work. Initially, I focused heavily on learning Figma and using quantitative methods for research, realizing later that qualitative methods would have been more beneficial.
As the sole UX resource in the TEK-team, I found myself doing user research on my own, prioritizing methods that I could perform alone. It's crucial to note that both quantitative and qualitative results are inherently biased, affecting their validity and reliability, as detailed in my final report, available upon request.
