Nikhil Jogendra

Increasing average reading time on Medium

PM School case challenge #198

Problem Statement

This was a national level challenge conducted by PM school in August 2024. Given the problem statement, the goal is to launch new features and achieve a 50% improvement in average reading time by the end of March 2025.

The Problem-Solving Approach

For a platform like Medium where ideas are shared and read by millions around the world, the reading time is a north star metric falling under the engagement metrics category. To provide effective solutions, I tried to track the readership statistics on Medium based on classifications like device type traffic, demographics of the readers and popular topics/tags read on Medium. Using these statistics, I planned to derive insights regarding specific areas/aspects where high traffic is present and addressing  pain-points in those specific areas would improve the reading time significantly.

Primary and Secondary Research

I interviewed a few of my friends and colleagues who read content on Medium. For starters, I asked them general questions and tried understanding their reading habits, preferences, reading styles on Medium and knowing their pain-points they faced which led them to end their reading sessions. On the other hand, I researched the reviews on app-store, play store and platforms like reddit where users stated and discussed about pain-points which caused them to give unsatisfactory reviews for Medium. These pain-points obtained from primary and secondary research were prioritized based to the level of traffic it is impacting across the platform.  

Feature Recommendations Made

The new features recommended were primarily targeted to improve the reader experience by making it convenient and relevant across the feed and the articles he/she wishes to read. The goal of features are also inclined to reduce the number of instances where the above-mentioned pain-points led to reduced session times.
(Refer to the slide deck below for detailed information)

Further steps and Future Scope

The Features were prioritized using RICE matrix. “Flash Tags” and ” Quick- view” features were priorities 1 & 2 respectively. In Accordance,  the success metrics and potential pitfalls were clearly stated to present holistic picture of the feature. The future scope for increasing the reading time of Medium lies in the budding pain-points that were identified in the user interviews. Here are a couple of pain-points that can be considered to be addressed in the future scope:

  • A Reader stated that he wanted to request his favorite writers to write on a particular topic he was interested to read
  • A Reader stated that he usually gets distracted by buzzing notifications and thus cannot have a longer reading session

TL;DR - The Slide Deck

Please refer to this comprehensive slide deck for a better understanding of the problem-solving approach and the feature recommendations

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