PROJECT:
The Boston Globe
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
The opinion sections of newspapers traditionally serve as a platform for experts and thought-leaders to assert their viewpoints on both topical and evergreen subjects that cycle through the news. This often leads to a binary and rigid "pro vs. con" or "for vs. against" structure, and rarely leaves room for the many different viewpoints that exist between two opposite sides of any spectrum to see the light of day.
THE ASK:
How can we reduce the polarization of debate and expand Globe Opinion's current platform to include more diverse viewpoints and a wider range of voices while engaging new and younger audiences?
WORKFLOW
Problem identification
Competitive analysis
Ideation
Idea refinement
Prototype
Test
Refine
Implement
Role: Project Manager
Timeline: January - May 2021
As part of a semester-long project in collaboration with The Boston Globe, I oversaw a team of eight classmates in creating three unique products to showcase diverse points of view, foster more productive debate, reduce the polarization of opinion, and attract younger audiences across Globe Opinion's platforms. This was an end-to-end product development project. At the end of the semester, we presented our ideas to Globe Opinion so they could implement these products into their newsroom.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
After understanding the scope of the problem, our team conducted competitive analyses of newsroom opinion sections to explore what other media outlets, think tanks, individuals and non-profits were doing in the space. Our research was comprehensive; we included newsrooms both large and small, domestic and international, legacy, traditional, and digital in order to understand the full range of projects, ideas, and products that others were experimenting with. We also looked specifically into examples of productive debate via social media, video, imagery, audio, and text to use as a springboard to inspire our own ideas.
IDEATION
We then began to ideate and form our own ideas about what tools we could produce that would work across digital platforms to imagine new ways to showcase diverse points of view, model productive debates grounded in truth, evidence, and personal experiences and bring in new audiences. Our group brainstorm inspired many ideas and allowed us to riff of each other's creativity.
A snapshot of our ideation process
IDEA REFINEMENT
Our ideation phase yielded many unique pathways we could take. I helped the team sharpen and refine our ideas, keeping our problem statement and design principles at the center of each project. We pitched and critiqued each other's ideas, and settled on six frontrunners to show the Globe Opinion team.
The Globe selected three unique products from those six, and I split up our group into three teams to begin the individual design processes. These three projects included: a tactile slider allowing readers to submit feedback using a sliding scale to gauge reader sentiment, delivering the Globe Opinion team key insights on reader behavior; an internal newsroom tool which scrapes social media data to unearth important conversations and ideas happening online before they break into the mainstream news cycle; and a series of campaigns to modernize Globe Opinion's branding strategy and social media presence to attract and appeal to a younger audience. We began working on wireframes and lo-fi prototypes, aligning our designs with the Globe Opinion team's technical, functional, and journalistic needs. While these three products had different features, uses, and design components, we collaborated as a team throughout the entire process.
PROTOTYPING
We started off with paper sketches, moved onto wireframes, and fleshed out our designs on Figma, presenting our progress to each other and to the Globe Opinion team for weekly feedback. I encouraged the team to design the prototypes using equitable and empathetic design principles by testing color palettes for usability with low-vision or blind users and assuring our designs were intuitive and simple for both newsroom users and Globe Opinion readers.
USER TESTING
Once our prototypes were at a level where we could present them as minimum viable products, we decided to conduct a few rounds of user testing to solve for any design flaws, inconsistencies, UX/UI errors and bugs we could have overlooked. I coordinated with each team to make sure they were testing with the right user focus groups and newsroom stakeholders. We conducted concurrent think-aloud tests to understand the user's journey as they walked through the product in order to gain real-time feedback, and task-analyses to understand how users would perform tasks with intended goals. From these usability tests, we gleaned key insights from the Globe Opinion team and users on how to improve and refine our products.