Around 2019-2020, I created designs for the CBS News iOS app to support new features in iOS 13 (shortcuts) and 14 (widgets). It was a small team: a product person, myself, and an engineer. At the time, CBS News was working with a representative from Apple, whose job it was to encourage significant app makers to support features in their operating systems.

Below are mockups of potential CBS News Shortcuts, shown in the context of the Shortcuts Widget and app (My Shortcuts and Gallery screens). I think my role on these was simply creating mockups, and I don't remember if these ever shipped.

I had a more involved role in ideating potential widgets. We explored many possibilities, but eventually narrowed them down severely to only two.

Below are aspirational concepts for a "live" widget that would link to CBS News livestreams, with the the user's geolocated local affiliate in the hero position. My memory is that these were deemed technically unfeasible for a variety of reasons, including:

• geolocation was a constant problem: our apps and website could not reliably detect the user's location in order to present their closest CBS News affiliate live stream or news content
• pulling accurate and up-to-date thumbnails and headlines from the feed was also unreliable; the text of the latest available headline often lagged behind the video content that was actually airing, and the thumbnails were autogenerated later
• the feed did not include information about the currently airing show (in the examples below, "Red & Blue"), so displaying its logo was not possible
• the live nature of the video feed meant the user would often begin watching during an ad break, which was a jarring user experience after clicking on a news headline

Below are explorations for a topic widget. I think the more immersive version, with the story thumbnail filling the widget, was prompted by Apple's lead, but proved unfeasible and often visually ugly, depending on actual real-life news imagery. This particular widget was also originally intended to support iOS system dark mode, but I seem to recall that this may not have shipped.

We also explored some variations of the topic widget, dedicated to specific CBS News shows and podcasts, such as Face the Nation in the examples below.

Below are the final shipping versions: Topics and Live (the later with only one item of content: the national livefeed).