Human-Centered Design for Local News Products

The Northwestern University Knight Lab, renowned for its development of digital storytelling tools and platforms, is interviewing news consumers and assessing data on their online behavior to inspire creation of products, tools and approaches that are designed to improve reader engagement, bolster financial sustainability and better inform citizens.

Roadmap timeline

Latest Research

Research Faculty and Staff

Joe Germuska

Chief Nerd

Germuska runs Knight Lab’s technology, professional staff and extracurricular activity. Immediately before joining the lab, he was a founding member of the Chicago Tribune’s News Apps team. He is the founder and project lead of the Census Reporter project, a website designed to make Census data easy for journalists. He also serves on the board of City Bureau, a Chicago-based civic journalism lab. His technology background is balanced by his BA in African History and MS in Product Design and Development Management, both earned from Northwestern.

Zach Wise

Associate Professor

Wise is an Emmy Award winning interactive producer and Associate Professor at Northwestern University. His work at the Las Vegas Sun and The New York Times has been recognized by ONA, NPPA, the Pulitzer Prize, the Peabody Awards , the Emmy awards, and numerous other industry honors. He has created several very popular tools for storytellers and journalists. Over 600k people have used Timeline JS and StoryMap to create stories seen by over a 100 million people each year. Timeline is also available in more than 65 languages and is used by major news organizations all over the world.