DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION. APOLOGIES.

Introduction

KUT and KUTX came to the wkrm program, requesting a very broad solution: To help the radio station form a deeper connection with the student body that they serve. The have observed through data that a majority of their listeners were of above the age of 40, and were Austinites that may or may not even have a connection to the university. This made it clear that they are failing at their most core ideal: To bring music and news to the students of the University of Texas.

And so the wkrm program took around a month of brainstorming, bouncing ideas off of each other using different strategies and exercises, and ultimately decided to divide and conquer. This was my pitch to KUT, taking around 2 months to put together.

Diagnosis

As someone who had been at UT for 3 years, as well as in Austin for my whole life, I had a pretty good understanding on the root issues at play. Primarily, KUT has very little exposure to the student population. Despite having ownership of an entire campus building, very little students know about KUT/KUTX, because they do not advertise themselves well to students. If KUT(X) were to take initiative build a bridge between them and their students, it would create long-lasting connections that create lifelong listeners.

I knew that whatever design I would make would have to fullfill the following goals:

Increase curiosity of discovery of KUT/KUTX
Be mobile enough to move around campus. Instead of trying to bring studnets to KUT(X), we should bring KUT(X) to the students.

Inspiration

Immeidalty I imagined a design that would take inspiration from NPR’s storycorp. I valued storycorp’s system because it both created great content while also allowing listeners to become a part of the content they listen to. If people contribute to the media around them, then they will have a unique connection with that media for the rest of their life.

However the storycorp model also helps fix an issue that I had seen in my time at UT: Students feeling voiceless. If KUT(X) were to begin to uplift student voices by giving them a platform to speak their mind, KUT(X) could craft powerful positive associations between themselves and the student body,