Tailored tools for journalists
Company: Expressen, Bonnier News Group
Role: Design Lead
Time: 2015-2016
Team size: 20
Platforms: PC, Mac, web
Users: Journalists and editors within the Bonnier News Group
Business Challenge
In news it’s important to be first. A lot of change had happened lately with different channels like paper and mobile changing a lot. It was evident that a more effective and quicker way of getting the news out was needed, despite the news channel.
User Challenge
Existing tools were outdated, fragmented, and lacked integration, hindering productivity and efficiency for journalists and editors. Constant context switching made people tired and inefficient.
Design Challenge
At Expressen there were 12 different editorial offices, each with vastly different ways of working and release rates spanning from minutes to months. Here I had to identify the lowest common denominator. What were some features that everyone needed. Build that and then add features from there.
Process
We built a custom software solution with React (web tech) to gradually replace the seven disparate off-the-shelf tools used for news production and publishing.
Conveniently I had all my users sitting on the same floor so I held interviews or held usability testing almost daily. I identified common pain points and iteratively designed a solution. I advocated for a lean development approach. We shipped the first version of the tool to a limited number of users less than two months into the project. It contained only a textfield and a publish button.
The first article was published through the tool the next day. This approach enabled our team to get daily user feedback leveling our understanding of user needs and helping us prioritize our backlog. Having live users really helped make the project feel real and important. It also helped creating a very user-centered foundation within the full team. The feedback helped the team ut prioritize our next steps. Subsequent iterations, steadily enhanced the tool's functionality.
I measured user satisfaction according to various factors to understand where we should put our focus to improve usability.
Solution
We built a clean, focused and decluttered tool, tailored for our users needs. Automatic tagging of articles saved time and helped offering readers articles on the same subject.
One of our main objectives was to streamline the user journey of readying an article. An example of this was adding images, where we reduced 18 clicks, using three different softwares into just one click. We also utilized some AI where images and tags were suggested based on the written text.
We also added a progress-bar to show the user how complete the article was in terms of what parts had been added. This way we could help users to not publish articles missing vital building blocks. Search engine optimization was considered very important by management and was therefore regarded as a vital item by the progress bar. This way we could guide users to get into new habits as the media environment changed or new features were added.
An early screenshot of the tool.
Results
Users experienced heightened focus and productivity, significantly reducing fatigue associated with switching between multiple tools.
From a business perspective, the "time to market" for news was drastically reduced, du to more effective tools and the ability to publish articles across various consumer channels with a single click. This adaptability proved invaluable in navigating the evolving media landscape.
As the software matured to meet a broader spectrum of user needs, it was progressively implemented across additional newsrooms, like Dagens Nyheter and Dagens Industri and ultimately became the primary tool for all 2000 journalists and editors within Swedens leading news provider, Bonnier News Group.