Over the summer, the Guardian Mobile Innovation Lab hinted at its next experiment: improving the experience of consuming news when offline. Now it’s revealed the trial product, a news app that incorporates location sharing, content and time customizations, and user data transparency — but is only available for the next few months.

The Lab introduced LabRdr — which can apparently be pronounced like “lab reader” or “Labrador” or another general squish of consonants — on Wednesday. Designed for the public transit commuter who may lose cell service on the subway, for example, and then be left with nothing to read, the app prepares a “package” of Guardian content based on the user’s previous reads in the app and the current stories of the morning or evening. It’s delivered twice a day via push alert, at the times the user has specified they’re commuting; each package contains an amount of content that the app determines will be readable within the duration of each user’s commute.

And yep, location factors in. “We’re experimenting with making offline news reading easier and more relevant, through automatic personalizations of your reading package based on signals like your interests or, possibly in the future, your location and what’s being read nearby,” Mobile Lab editor Sasha Koren noted in the Medium announcement:

LabRdr’s approach to offline news reading is experimental, and different from existing offline news apps in a few ways: Rather than give you all current stories on every topic, it delivers only a self-contained package of Guardian articles keyed to your interests, twice a day just in time for your commute, at times you can specify.

As you use it, it learns what you like to read and delivers you content keyed to your interests. (We’re setting aside important conversations about filter bubbles for now to learn something about personalization.) In addition, we show you how we use the data you share with us, in an effort to enhance trust through transparency…

What we’re looking to learn

What makes a good content recommendation system for news? A lot of the existing work about content recommendations are around e-commerce and we’re interested in what signals are particularly good for news organizations and news reading.

We’re also looking to gauge readers’ reactions to the utility of having a short package of news defined for them for a set period of time. Without the option to read a full spectrum of articles on many topics, will they feel better informed with those they do read, or have a sense of achievement at completing a few articles in a set?

As with all our experiments, we’ll report on what we learn in follow-up posts after the app has been running for a while and we’ve collected and analyzed data and reactions.

I tested it out on my evening and morning commutes, finding minor glitches with loading pictures and refreshing after the previous day’s content but otherwise a straightforward user experience. When you first log into the app with your Google account, you’re asked to set your commute start times and durations. My package for a 30-minute trip provided 13 Guardian stories with topics from oil taxes in Canada to Pope Francis calling the International Space Station. At the end of each article, a grey box informed me which categories of interest would be added to my personal log, such as “Kapersky Lab, Malware, Data and computer security, Computing, Technology, Russia, Europe, Espionage” for a story about a Russian cybersecurity firm alleging an NSA contractor accidentally leaked U.S. hacking tools. On the main page of the app users can go into the Log section to view the information recorded on their categories and location. The categories even remind you which stories you read on which day, a nice touch. The related stories within each article, though, and the Feedback option in LabRdr’s menu tried to take me online to the Guardian’s website, which was inaccessible at points during my commute.

LabRdr isn’t the first attempt at improving offline news. Way back in 2012, reading apps News.me and Instapaper both endeavored to serve the offline reader and relied on location to do so, but News.me didn’t survive a Twitter API update. Other apps like Pocket or Evernote require the readers themselves to do the legwork of saving the content for later perusing, rather than having relevant material presented to them.

Another difference is that the Mobile Lab is making an effort to share the data it collects through LabRdr. In a section of the app called the Log, you can view the tracked reading and commute patterns. “The app is a really good first step for gathering information, using it in a respectful way, and seeing how people feel about that,” said Sarah Schmalbach, co-leader of the Mobile Lab with Koren and its senior product manager. She pointed out that readers might feel different about sharing personal information with a news organization than they do about sharing it with, say, Google Maps or Amazon.

“If we can deliver news in more contextually relevant moments, then [will] that content be more valuable to the user?” wondered Connor Jennings, the app’s developer, who came up with the idea during his own frustrating experience reading offline news during his commute.

The team hopes to share its findings about reader trust, habit formation, and more with news organizations; the Mobile Lab is funded by the Knight Foundation (disclosure: Nieman Lab also receives funding from Knight) to explore solutions for the mobile news experience. But its sample will likely be restricted to those who commute using public transit, rather than people who drive, bike, or walk to work.

“It’s pretty narrow. We’re not targeting people who don’t commute; we’re not targeting people who commute by car. There’s a whole range of people we’re not gearing this toward,” Koren acknowledged.

LabRdr provides a “targeted product until we get better and deeper insights,” Schmalbach said. “We’re confident that the audience is big enough to get a big read on this content.”

Like the Mobile Lab’s other experiments — such as real-time Guardian commentary on a U.S. presidential debate via push alert; live push notifications with the Wall Street Journal — LabRdr is a temporary project. It will be removed from the App Store (it’s iPhone-only) after a couple of months.

1/ Today we launch our most intricate experiment yet. LabRdr, an iOS app for offline reading is now in the App Store https://t.co/leQmyXqdoA

— Guardian Mobile Lab (@GdnMobileLab) October 25, 2017

2/ It’s designed with a mass transit commuter in mind, who has little to no cell or wifi and limited time to read.

— Guardian Mobile Lab (@GdnMobileLab) October 25, 2017

3/ Users get alerted to 'packages' of Guardian articles twice a day at times they determine. The packages geared to length of commute.

— Guardian Mobile Lab (@GdnMobileLab) October 25, 2017

4/ Packages will be customized over time, using topical interests for recommendations at first; possibly location & commute patterns later.

— Guardian Mobile Lab (@GdnMobileLab) October 25, 2017

5/ We’re also experimenting with alerts based on user’s location, and offering transparency into what data we’re collecting.

— Guardian Mobile Lab (@GdnMobileLab) October 25, 2017

6/ More detail, and background on what we're hoping to learn and share –> https://t.co/KlNp7jC9QC

— Guardian Mobile Lab (@GdnMobileLab) October 25, 2017

7/ If you’re an iPhone user – and don’t commute behind a steering wheel – give it a try and let us know what you think! /end/

— Guardian Mobile Lab (@GdnMobileLab) October 25, 2017