Team Members: Sarah Outhwaite, Alex Pham and Anmol Anubhai

Role: UX Researcher. Used a combination of qualitative research methods such as culture probe kits, semi-structured interviews (with experts, journalists and young readers) as well as workshops with journalists to learn about the information seeking behavior of millennials/young readers and journalists' perceptions of their readers. Made affinity boards, distilled insights and designed synthesis models.

Mentors: Prof. Michael Smith, Frank Mina (Design Director @ The Seattle Times) and Thomas Wilburn (Newsroom Web Developer @ The Seattle Times)

Duration: March 2015 - Present

Background

Disruption from digital technology has led to substantial drops in revenue over the last two decades, stemming from a decrease in both print subscriptions and advertising profits. In the United States, daily print circulation decreased by 10% between 2015 and 2016 (Pew Research Center, 2017). 

Newspapers compete directly with large tech organizations including Google, Facebook, and Apple for reader attention and financial support. Digital media has redefined information distribution, and personal tech devices have changed the landscape of information seeking behavior. In the midst of all these changes, what is the value in supporting regional papers like The Seattle Times? Regional newspapers are essential for the health of our neighborhoods, cities, and countries. 

Local news supplies crucial information for civic engagement. Without it, local communities face increased challenges understanding and cooperating with each other, and advocating for their neighborhoods. We began our research with The Seattle Times by focusing on its importance as an independent, regional organization, and the future of local news.

Secondary Research

As the print subscription base ages, the organization wants to develop subscription relationships with the younger generation. This population is immersed in digital news and digital communication. We investigated industry baselines and millennial behaviors to better understand opportunities in this area.

Secondary Research | Information Seeking Behavior

We conducted a literature review to better understand the journalism industry and information-seeking behavior. Studies conducted before the digital era helped us identify disrupted vs. enduring aspects of today’s news landscape, including the importance of unpredictability and variety in keeping readers engaged, and the way that young people’s media consumption changes as they move into adulthood (Finn, 1997). 

We also considered the roots of information-seeking behavior. This can have goal-oriented triggers, like product comparison or decision-making, but it can also be triggered by emotional patterns such as assuaging generalized anxiety, or seeking a surrogate for social connection (Case, 2002, Chapter2). 

We began to consider what The Seattle Times provided to its readers not in terms of traditional news categories, but in terms of information itself. However, certain information-seeking behaviors have evolved with digital technology, and the news industry is in the middle of redefining its best practices. NPR identifies the difference between what journalists think is important, and what information actually makes a difference to its audience: “The news peg might be important to us as journalists, but the data suggest our listeners are more interested in why the story matters to them.” (Charney and Deprey,2017)

Secondary Research | Digital Generation

We investigated recent research on millennials news behaviors. Smartphones as a dominant force in young readers’ lives, and reinforce preferences for media choice, variety, and control. Millennials are an “extremely diverse, locally engaged group,” with genuine interest in incisive journalism (Jacobs Media, 2017). 

They generally enjoy reading more than watching news, and encounter content serendipitously in social media. This ends up exposing them to more news and broader perspectives than they seek directly (Perez, 2016). 

According to the American Press Institute, young digital readers tend to consume news in an “often continuous but mindful way...which mixes news with social connection, problem solving, social action, and entertainment,” rather than through discrete engagement with news providers. At the same time, 45% of millennials follow multiple “hard news” topics, and 69% of millennial get news at least once a day (Media Insight Project, 2015).

Secondary Research | Constructive Journalism 

Finally, we explored the growing movement of Constructive Journalism in the news industry. After many decades of creating a strong separation between objective and editorialized news, some organizations are beginning to explore the curation of good or feel-good news. During a competitive assessment of contemporary news products, we saw that the New York Times along with multiple digital news sites and aggregator apps was beginning to curate sections of positive news, responding directly to the emotional component of information-seeking behavior.

Problem Setting

Millennials want meaningful, impactful news, and local news provides channels for actionable information engagement. We see opportunities for The Seattle Times to build strong relationships with its younger, digital readership. We needed to figure out what stood in the way of this. 

As we began to speak with The Seattle Times staff about processes and practices, the problem of not understanding audience needs and identities came up repeatedly. Reporters, editors, and designers were passionate about creating meaningful content that spoke to their readers. 

However, they did not have the time or processes to connect with the people they wanted to reach - young and diverse people who do not yet subscribe to the paper. We began to think about what it would take to change this dynamic. We formed our research questions to better understanding the relationships between audience and journalists.

After conducting thorough secondary research, we decided to focus on the below mentioned research questions and goals.

Research Questions

• How does The Seattle Times decide what to cover, and how it will be covered?
  
• How does the newsroom get information about what its readers find valuable, and what have they learned from this?
  
• What information about readers does the staff feel would help them create better content?
  
• What do young Seattleites think of the Seattle Times and other local news sources?
• What motivates young Seattleites to seek local news information in their daily lives?
• How well-informed about local news do young Seattleites feel, and what areas do they wish they knew more about?

Research Goals

NEWS VALUE
What does young Seattle believe makes news worth reading and supporting? What characteristics define an ideal news experience

NEWS PERCEPTIONS
How do previous experiences create expectations about the news industry, as well as relationships with individual news sources?

LOCAL RELATIONSHIPS
Understand young Seattleite’s relationships to different neighborhoods, and how connected or disconnected they feel from local communities.

Participant Recruitment 

Our participants came from two distinct groups of people: 1) Journalists 2) Millennials

Participant Recruitment | Journalists

The first group of participants came from The Seattle Times staff, with a focus on journalists, editors, and graphic designers. We recruited journalists with the help of our sponsors, who put us in touch with their teams. We recruited 6 journalists for semi-structured interviews and a design workshop. We made sure that we interviewed individuals who held different job positions at the Times: 

• Newsroom design director 
  
• Graphic designer 
  
• Newsroom/product liaison 
  
• Journalists 
  
• Developers 
  
• Engagement editor
  

Finally, we recruited all our participants from different zip codes. We designed an invitation for our culture probes activity. We posted a digital version of our invite along with the link to our recruitment survey on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. We also printed physical copies of our invitation and handed them out at public events including concerts and meet-ups.

Hence, we decided to incorporate a set of culture probe activities specifically designed to understand their tacit information seeking behavior and perceptions of news sources today. 

• The creative nature of culture probes allowed us to observe our participants‘s behavior in a spontaneous and organic way. 
  
• Semi-structured interviews let us ask specific questions about the reader’s news consumption habits and preferences, and about journalist‘s opinions on their own processes and readers’ needs. 
  
• A design workshop with the Seattle Times staff let us hear journalists’ responses to culture probes, and how concrete information about readers might help their work. 
  
• Observations at The Seattle Times let us create a baseline for the general rhythm of communication in the newsroom.
  

Research Method | Culture Probes

Data gathered: A box of varied artifacts and texted images, audio recording, notes 

The purpose of implementing ‘Culture Probes’ was to familiarize ourselves with our participants’ tacit needs and motivations behind seeking information. These are the key points that we learnt from the article - “Culture Probes and the value of Uncertainty” by William Gaver, Andrew Boucher, Sarah Pennington and Brendan Walker as well as “Cultural Probes” by Bill Gaver, Tony Dunne and Elena Pacenti: 

• Culture Probes must include open ended activities that motivate users to step outside their boundaries and to give surprising yet genuine answers (Purely fiction based abstract activities are also encouraged) 
  
• Researchers should never try to analyze culture probe results by trying to find common trends that occur in all participants’ sets of results. This might lead to them averaging all responses and might cause them the loss of important individual details 
  
• While culture probes are great to learn more about the users, designers should never use them directly to inform their design decisions. They are tools to help learn more about the users and shouldn’t be used as the only research method to inform design decisions 
  
• Adopting a certain style of art while designing the boxes and its articles is preferable
  

The activity, itself, was a week-long passive activity with millennial recruits. Participants were not told that we are specifically working with The Seattle Times. Participants engaged in a six-day activity in which they were asked to complete a different creative activity every day. Prompts were delivered to them on a daily basis, and participation was flexible (ex. if they skip one day they can do it later, or just complete the activities that interest them). The form factor of the prompt was inspired by a subscription box. 

At the end of the the week, we met participants in person to collect their probe artifacts. Discussing these artifacts became an ice-breaker that then lead into a semi-structured interview.

Research Method | Semi Structured Interviews | Journalists

Data gathered: Notes, audio recordings 

Another one of our activities was semi-structured interviews with 6 Seattle Times staff members. The goal of the interviews was to get a deeper perspective on how decisions are made in the Seattle Times newsroom, what the information the newsroom understands as valuable to readers, and what information the staff members would find valuable about their readers recorded with the permission of the participant. 

Data Synthesis | Affinity Board Making 

We used yellow stickies to put up all our findings and then reorganized them according to emerging themes. You can see a short glimpse of us working on our affinity board below.

We distilled the below given insights from our affinity boards.

Synthesis Model | Value Maps

We created value maps to synthesize our participant findings in terms of our three research goals:

• Values: What young Seattle believes makes news worth reading and supporting. The characteristics that define an ideal news experience.
  
• Perceptions: How previous experiences create expectations about the news industry, as well as relationships with individual news sources.
  
• Local Relationships: Young Seattle’s relationships to different neighborhoods, and how connected or disconnected they feel from local communities.
  

This helped us characterize three distinct relationships that our participants had to Seattle and its local news: 

• CLOSE - KNIT COMMUNITY 
  
• INDEPENDENT THINKER 
  
• NON - NATIVE COMMUNITY
  

We also made a user-journey map that shows a reader's interactions with news (using different platforms and mediums) on a regular weekday

We also made an ecosystem map that shows all the interactions between the newsroom, news products and the readers. The map also shows the relationships that the three share.

Design Principles

For the process ahead, we decided to keep the below listed design principles in mind while ideating and designing the solution ahead.

• BRIDGING GAPS: Help journalists present news value in the way that readers understand it
  
• INDIVIDUALITY: Respect both journalist and readers’ individual values 
  
• PRIVACY: Respect reader’s privacy, even in situations when personalizing experiences 
  
• RESOURCES: Be mindful of the resource scope of an independent newspaper 
  
• PROFESSIONAL VALUE: Design in support of professional journalism and local news 
  
• INFLUENCE: Design to show the influence of news on local populations
  

We intend to further explore the below mentioned design opportunities while ideating.

Design Opportunities | Readers Feeling Overwhelmed

We identified multiple aspects of the digital news experience that left readers feeling overwhelmed, and see an opportunity to make the news reading experience less exhausting. Readers first choose from multiple news sources and then multiple news articles. 

Some participants mentioned that they do not have the time to read long articles, and end up just skimming through headlines instead. Cutting long articles short also impacted their ability to remember or save certain stories and return to them later. They mentioned wanting to read news on topics of their interest (Seeking Curated News). They detest sensationalism.

Design Opportunities | Creating Actionable Local News

We see an opportunity to help The Seattle Times more consistently communicate the relevance that local news has to individual readers’ lives. Participants mentioned that they want news that begins conversations in their community. They want to be told about events before they happen (speed of local news is a crucial parameter). 

They wish to hear both sides of a story (they seek objectivity). They need to be able to connect with the relevance of local news and see its significance in their own lives. 

Design Opportunities | Paywalls

Although paywalls had a significant impact on our participants’ news experience, this is not an opportunity space for our team’s design. Participants mentioned that they detest paywalls and do not like to return to the news source once they encounter a paywall. However, this problem requires changes in the revenue structure and certain policy related changes. 

We also identified existing tools that may help The Seattle Times solve paywall experience issues. Thus, as a team we decided to not work within this space.