Profiles In Impact: Kristen Muller

Formerly Chief Content Officer of LAist (LA’s NPR news station), Kristen sponsored a project for the Hive’s Human-Centered Design Class in the fall of 2022 that asked students to develop new products that would help Angelenos connect to the region. Kristen is currently Executive Editor of The LA Local.

I’ve spent most of my career thinking about one basic question: how do you make journalism matter? Not just as information—but as something that helps a community stay healthy, feel connected, and even act better because of what it knows. When I was at LAist, that question had become pretty urgent. Public radio knows how to serve people who already have a listening  habit. But for younger folks, “the radio” might not even be a thing. So we needed to figure out what value public radio might offer people who don’t get their news from it.

Our early research focused on people who were struggling to find their place in the vast region we served. We knew they were looking for ways to connect….but we had no clear idea what “connecting” might look like—or exactly how our station might help them do it. That was the brief we brought to the Hive’s students. 

The insights they brought back had an intensity that was missing from our early findings, an emotional texture that brought us closer to the lived experience of the people we needed to reach. Their interviews caught the feel of young adults’ loneliness, in a post-COVID reality—their not knowing how to step back into an in-person world. They helped us understand what it’s like to move to a new city, where you’re working a remote job, and when the workday ends…you’re on your own in a neighborhood you hardly know. 

 One solution they proposed was “The Neighborhood Box,” which had a hand-drawn map, personal recommendations for places to go, a gift card to a café, handwritten notes from business owners—stuff like that. It didn’t just say “here are some cool things to do.” It felt like a real person saying, “Come visit us.”

Another idea was the “Shopping Buddy,” where you’d get matched with another newcomer, meet outside Trader Joe’s, and get your groceries together. There were a lot of reasons the idea wouldn’t work as a solution—but it really helped us understand the problem: sitting down with a stranger for a coffee or a beer can feel really intimidating. Much easier to do something together—especially, an errand you have to do anyway—and talk while you’re doing it. Because even the simplest things can feel so hard when you’re feeling isolated, uncertain and a little afraid.

Where the project went wrong was where we took it after the students handed it off. Instead of just making some rough prototypes that’d help us figure out the details of the idea, we immediately focused on scale and profitability. Before we understood what people really wanted, we turned the Neighborhood Box into a pledge-drive premium: we took one big swing, and when it didn’t work, we concluded that the idea had failed. But that’s the completely wrong lesson. Because a prototype is not a miniature rollout; it’s a learning experiment. When somebody pitches a big idea in my newsroom, my first question is: What’s the smallest, cheapest way we could try it out—and learn what we still don’t know?

written by Dan Coleman

published by Salina Muñoz