Meg Pickard, Head of Communities & User Experience – The Guardian (London)

…on, developments at the guardian.co.uk, how to receive user feedback and designing for your mum.

Life at the Guardian

Meg jokingly calls her self an ‘insultant’ for the Guardian (internal consultant), but in all seriousness highlights the value of having someone responsible for focusing on the user agenda, constantly asking ‘why are we doing this?’ and ‘why would people want that?’. If you don’t know what your really asking of your users, then they most certainly won’t get it either.

Meg describes her job as understanding cultures and spotting patterns of which her background in anthropology is proving useful.

Innovation

The web has changed and now there is a much greater desire to be “of the web and not just on it.”

Some of the things Meg and the Guardian team have been thinking a lot is new ways for streams of information to talk to one another.

For example, how can we combine content and data to provide new and interesting information (data journalism). Or, how can a news article not only reference the past, but also have points to referencing the future. How do we turn one click into two? So that we are thinking of content discovery in terms of how did I get here and where would I like to go next.

Meg emphasizes that publication is no longer the end of the authors relationship with their content as it was in the newspaper print days, but only the beginning.

One solution The Guardian is working on to address challenges in terms of resourcing online curation, is by looking at how keywords can be harnessed to direct traffic around your site. Meg discusses the need to go beyond individual keywords as an effective solution. A typical example we use at work is Paris Hilton, because Paris is a person and a place, however, it could also be that you not only want to know about Paris the place, but also cookery there. To try and assist users to find the very specific content that addresses their needs the Guardian have begun working on a project that looks at constellations of keywords.

Later in the year they will be launching rich keyword pages. These keyword URLs will look something like this: www.guardian.co.uk/keywords/paris+cookery+class allowing users to string keywords together and get tailored results and then grab an RSS feed for it.

Meg’s objectives are to reach the power users, not just the lowest common denominator as these users are the ones who pull the others forward. A User Experience design shouldn’t be about designing so that your mum can use it, but so that it is engaging and relevant for the future. Such thinking breads innovative ideas from the team at the Guardian, as they focus on the needs of niche communities – not just churning stuff out for the masses.

… Looking at how we consume, not just where.

Typically the majority of property listing sites or travel sights requires users to enter a location to begin their search for information. What Meg has found is that many users don’t think about their holidays or where they would like to live in this way. Rather, they think of it in terms of a set of requirements and much greater flexibility in the location. “I’d like to go somewhere sunny, for under a $2000, near the beach or with a pool.” Another good example of a property site offering something different in the market is http://www.propertysnake.co.uk a site that lists properties which are dropping in price. This concept acknowledges peoples flexibility in looking for something they can afford.

A Note on Accessibility…

Don’t just think of it as an issue for audiences with impermanent – but as accessibility in terms of everyone everywhere. So we are designing for ability and devices as well.

Managing User Feedback

We all know people don’t like change… Meg says that this hasn’t only been true in her own experience, but among her colleagues as well. A friend at Flickr noted that their users get really angry when new features are added, accusing the development team of polluting the product and within 2 months it is a feature they can’t live with out it.

So how do we manage which feedback is useful?

Ignore all user feedback for the first 48 hours.

Over the following 2 weeks, write down the complaints and then ignore it. If after that ikf users are still complaining about the same issue go back to your notes and look at the issues raised.

Tips for in House User Experience Teams

Meg recommends user experience teams developing their own labs and proof of concepts. Don’t wait for the boss to take notice! She also acknowledges the need to illustrate your business analysis skills by having an internal blog.

Meg also told us all to look at http://www.pluck.com for affordable widgets to encourage user involvement on our sites.