Case description
News consumption is rather small within DRTV where the current aim and the user’s primary motivation for watching is amusement. As a public broadcasting service, DRTV recognizes the vital role news plays in our lives and seeks to expand the entertainment focus by integrating news offerings for younger audience.
Although entertainment, documentaries and fiction will still be the primary reason for engaging with DRTV, DRTV would like to be forward thinking and take advantage of their streaming service platform as mean to integrate unique news formats in a novel and modern way.
Challenge
Design a solution for how to include news for young users in the current DRTV and create a piece of content that will attract the target audience.
Duration: 3 weeks.
My role: UX designer.
Conceptual solution
The conceptual solution is a news service that is incorporated in the current streaming service.
The most current news showcased are the news with most interaction with the users.
Moreover, a new news format is added. It is a handheld format with the journalist reporting directly from the field. This is short news meant to be consumed on the go.
Methods
Service Design
User diaries
Interviews
User journey mapping
Content audit
Value Proposition Canvas
Personas
Experience prototyping
High fidelity prototype
5 second usability test
Gangster test
Value
News and amusement in one app
Relevant news to the target audience with relatable content
Client
DRTV – Danmarks Radio
Target audience
Danes between 20 and 35 years
THE PROCESS
User diaries
In the discover phase of our project we sat on developing online user diaries to uncover the news consumption habits of the target audience.
I was looking for contextual understanding of the user behaviour and patterns in mood and news consumption. When and where did the participants consume news and what kind of news was. Was it in depth news or just brief headlines.
To ease the process of filling out the diary, I chose to use the snippet-technique. In this way the participants were not forced to update their diary if they were on the go.
To help the participants remember to fill out the diary, I monitored their entries and encouraged them to fill out the diary if they did not do so by them selves. Along the way I expressed my gratitude to them.
Five out of eight participants completed the diary studies and I held individual post-study interviews to answer questions about and discuss some of their inputs in depth.
Duration: Two weekdays and one weekend.
Number of participants: 8
Key takeaways
- The younger audience is only happy to encounter news if the news is suited to their usage of streaming, and is quick and easy to consume.
- The older part of the participants went for the more in depth news and was willing to use the time needed to consume the news.
- All participants were affected by friends when it came to which news they searched for and the popularity of the news.
- The news was primarily consumed on smartphones.
Diary template
Example of entry in diary
User journey mapping
For analyzing the user diary we sat on developing simple user journeys.
In these journeys we mapped out the touchpoints between the participants and news, we mapped the users mood before, under and after consuming the news, at what device the participants consumed the news, and what kind of news were consumed.
We also mapped out how, when and where the participants consumed the news.
These user journeys were used in the define phase to develop personas, to find out which devices to focus on, figuring out when to reach out to the users, and highlighting the development priorities.
By looking at the user journeys of the participants we were able to reveal the routines in consuming news, and mapping out potential obstacles and opportunities for DRTV when attracting the users.
Timeline of the user journey: 1 day.
User journey mapping in the making
Experience prototyping
From the middle of the discovery phase we started out experience prototyping. We knew that our solution should contain some kind of notification when breaking news appeared, so experience prototyping was a way for us to try out some new service ideas and see how they affected the participants.
Notifications
E.g. we wanted to test how the participants reacted on the sound of a notification on their smartphone while they had their attention other places. This was done by simply sending them a text message saying “BREAKING NEWS” a number of times.
Number of participants: 8
Key takeaways
- From the notification study we found that only a few of the participants reacted instantly on the sound of a notification.
- After a while they got annoyed and asked if there was any possibility of not getting the notifications.
News format
Another example is testing which kind of news setup that attracted the target audience the most. The test participants were shown two kinds of setup of the same news. The first setup was a hand held format where the journalist was on location. The other format was a traditional news program with an anchorman in a studio.
I asked them questions such as “Which format is the most entertaining?” and “Which format is the most reliable?”
Number of participants: 4
Key takeaways
- All of the test participants agreed on the handheld format was the most entertaining setup.
- Most participants agreed on that both setups were reliable.
Screen dumps of participants testing different news formats
THE RESULT
Prototype walk through