One thing I noticed the document doesn't address: what if the hypothesis is wrong? Is the project abandoned? Or is that included in the eventual product/result?
And is the product in this case an editorial story/article? First sentence suggests a "storytelling project":
> Hypothesis-Driven Design (or HDD for short) is a problem solving method that helps editorial teams take a user-centered and evidence-based approach to the discovery, design, and development of new storytelling projects.
I assume that means podcast/This American Life-style stories.
Don't know the answers to your questions, though it seems the Visuals team produces work for daily stories, not just big features like special podcasts and series. They also produce a few projects that don't seem to originate from the radio/podcast side:
Not just podcasts. Follow the link provided in GP, it's a mixed-media format (audio, text, images). It seems the "hypothesis" here is about how to present the information. Hypothesize about the format, propose an experiment, see how users react, evaluate how to proceed. It's an application of Scrum project management with multiple prototypes (hypothesis -> prototype) as experiments on how to present the information. It's not about the story's hypothesis (X happened because of Y, oops that's not how the facts pan out).
And is the product in this case an editorial story/article? First sentence suggests a "storytelling project":
> Hypothesis-Driven Design (or HDD for short) is a problem solving method that helps editorial teams take a user-centered and evidence-based approach to the discovery, design, and development of new storytelling projects.
I assume that means podcast/This American Life-style stories.