News Site Redesign Strategy

Role: UX Researcher, Content Strategist, Project Lead

Impact: New article design, increased social sharing

When you work on a small technical team, you wear many hats. Although my title was Technical Director at this point, ultimately I did a lot of product design and research work while leading this project. I began with doing content auditing and prioritizing exercises with our internal stakeholders. At the same time, I looked for opportunities to do guerilla research, such as during the Tribune’s annual Texas Tribune Festival. Two important goals we’d laid out were getting more engagement from a younger demogaphic, and increasing the social sharing of our stories, so it was imperative that we talk this group and get honest feedback.

Interviews with younger readers revealed that a summary at the top of a news story was a “must have” — participants told us that they wouldn’t read further unless they felt it would be worth their while. A compelling image also went a long way towards engaging them, and encouraging them to share stories with their friends. Finally, we got first-hand evidence of what we’d long suspected, namely, that news consumption was opportunistic: college-age students often looked at news while waiting for class to begin, for example, or while taking the bus. This was an important reminder to both the designers and editors that we could not assume people were sitting down with the sole intent of reading a digital newspaper, as it were.

The redesigned article page, including a summary and redesigned sharing elements.

The new page was rolled out gradually in October and November of 2016, and showed an increase in social shares, donation clicks, and engagement with comments.