Overview

Cluster is a B2B content production tool designed for content researchers, producers, marketers, and publishing teams. It provides a virtual workspace for planning content like newsletters, videos, blog posts, and podcasts. Individual creators and full service agencies can use Cluster to create buckets of topics for capturing research and related media from across the web. Additionally, AI-powered summarization identifies key insights across topic references to create a story timeline for content accuracy and faster production.

Users & Roles

Based on our market research and user interviews, we've identified the following key user roles in most content production processes:

• Heavy user of web clipping and organization features
• Responsible for summarizing key takeaways of research
• High touch user
• Permissions: Editor | | Producer | - Oversees content creation process
• Requires high-level view of projects and timelines
• Collaborates with other team members
• Mix of high touch and low touch users
• Permissions: Admin, Editor | | Marketer | - Focuses on content strategy and distribution
• Needs access to analytics and performance metrics
• Uses Cluster to plan campaigns
• Mix of high touch and low touch users
• Permissions: Editor | | Publishing Team Member | - Responsible for draft preparation and publication
• Requires access to version control and approval workflows
• Works across multiple topic developments at once
• High touch user
• Permissions: Editor | | Individual Creator | - Uses Cluster for personal projects
• Requires a simplified interface with core functionality
• May upgrade to team features as their work expands
• Permissions: Admin, Editor | | Agency Account Manager | - Manages multiple client projects
• Needs robust organization and client management features
• Requires detailed reporting and analytics of final outputs
• Low touch user
• Permissions: Admin, Editor |

Lifecycle & User Stories

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According to our design sprint and user interviews, content moves through a 6-step lifecycle during production:

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1. Content Planning
2. Content Research
3. Drafting
4. Editing
5. Publishing
6. Reporting

This lifecycle is supported by several back and front-of-house operations that are commonly handled by similar tools. The following operations are recommended for our MVP:

• Admins should be able to create, edit or delete teams
• Admins should be able to assign users to teams
• Admins should be able to reset a user’s password
• Editors should be able to reset their password | | Project Management | - Admins should be able to create, edit and delete projects
• Admins should be able to add and remove users to projects
• Admins should be able to view a log of all organization activity
• Editors should be able to view a list of their projects
• Editors should be able to view the topics included in their projects
• Editors should be able to view a log of all user-relevant activity | | Content Planning | - Editors should be able to create, edit and delete a cluster
• Editors should be able to organize and filter clusters
• Editors should be able to assign dates, status, and tags to clusters | | Content Research | - Editors should be able to create, edit and delete new items (links, pdfs, videos, social media, podcasts)
• Editors should be able to clip pages into items from the web browser
• Editors should be able to assign clipped items to projects and clusters
• Editors should be able to assign items to clusters
• Editors should be able to assign tags to items
• Editors should be able to generate, edit, delete summaries of clusters and items | | Composing | - Editors should be able to switch between Composer modes (Zen, Story and Text) ****- Editors should be able to browse available assigned items
• Editors should be able to assign items to a draft
• Editors should be able to edit an item’s “story” date
• Editors should be able to compose drafts using a WYSIWYG editor
• Editors should be able to assign status to drafts
• Editors should be able to assign a publish date to drafts |

Insights

<aside> 📌 All user interview notes can be located here.

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Cluster Interviews