Everywhere is somewhere

Project: Product onboarding

Role: Product design

Knowhere: Nathaniel Barling (co-founder and CEO), Alexandre Elkrief (co-founder and president), Reza Shoja (senior frontend developer), Miles Johnson (software engineer)

Knowhere is a newsletter-first, AI-powered startup aiming to solve America’s local news crisis. It leverages its proprietary AI platform to establish and grow sustainable local news outlets all across America, with particular emphasis on underserved news deserts.

I worked closely with leadership and the product team to design end-to-end onboarding, establish an extendable information architecture and navigation, and evolve the overall editorial experience for readers.

Knowhere’s core technology product was engineered to report the stories that most impact American's daily lives — those in towns, cities, and communities in which we all live and work. In early 2021 it began growing quickly, adding markets state-by-state across the country.

Once the list of markets began to rapidly expand, readers from places as far away and distinct as Ashtabula and Orlando needed smarter pathways to discover and engage with their local news.

Daily newsletters start out as an automated curation of local headlines. Once a local audience achieves critical mass, Knowhere assembles teams of embedded journalists reporting directly from their communities.

The solution was a three-step user journey, using zip codes to focus a user’s search for their local community; offering a simplified newsletter sign up; and encouraging an upgrade to paid membership to directly support the company’s mission and local journalists.

As this fast-paced startup continues to evolve, Knowhere has begun partnering with existing local news organizations to license its technology, as well.