Breaking Boundaries: Collaborative Solutions-Mapping For New Storytelling Possibilities

3:00PM Aug 26, 2023

Speakers:

Keywords:

ideas

data

people

table

housing

stories

app

validating

workshop

group

brainstorm

section

emissions

existing

issue

work

capitalizing

eligible

session

quiz

Yeah I like

the status

really hope it goes away

right all right

choose so you're doing the agenda right

yes

one minute minor setback situation I kinda lost my voice yesterday but I think I should be good

hear they're doing a game show next door. So she'll just yeah we'll have like a little extra soundcheck these mics. are loud so that everybody over here is fine

Hello, everybody. Hi. How's everybody doing today? Welcome to breaking boundaries collaborative solutions mat mapping session for unlocking new storytelling possibilities which is a very long way to talk you guys through the creative process that myself Elizabeth Flynn, the senior visual designer at the Philadelphia Inquirer on the PDE team and staying up comeback. I practice her name like four times and mess it up. But seeing it come by a lead product designer at the Philadelphia Inquirer, we work together on the product team. And we're always trying to think of new ways that we can present stories and something that's fresh and innovative and dependent on our platforms. So what we're going to do today is talk about how we can take existing stories and existing data existing content that we have without all our publications and make it something new. Xena is going to talk us through the agenda for today.

Hi everyone. Well before that. I just want to say this is my first time speaking at a conference I'm a little bit nervous, but my grandma was there proud of me showing the photos like can we like do a selfie together?

Thank you. So thank you for the great introduction. We're going to talk a little bit about our process, I think choir and then show you a few examples. And then we're going to have a very fun workshop and then we're going to share ideas and inspire each other. So, in the product team, this is our process and adjust. And I'm gonna go through all of this, but for the sake of time, we're gonna focus on the first three for our workshop. So identifying existing stories and brainstorming new ways to tell these stories go together in a way. Why don't you think of existing stories think of stories you tell in a traditional format. This could also be series of stories, and you want to focus on your audience who's reading these or reading listening to or watching these stories? Were like, what platforms do they use and how are they engaging with them? And you want to think about that. Once you have an idea of what you have, you want to think about how you can brainstorm new ways how can you make this make these stories in a way that's more engaging? How can you meet your audience where they are? Think of if you have a series of events you're telling, let's say free outdoor movie nights in the summer, cannot be a location based calendar. You know, there are no bad ideas. And then the most important part is going to be validating your ideas and getting insights. You want to think about what existing data do you have and how can you get that data who can you work with at your organization? Or do you need to do new research? Do you want to test your ideas? What kind of questions are important to validate your ideas or assumptions? So this is going to be the first like these three is going to be what we're focusing on for today's workshop, but I'm gonna go through the rest as well. So then we think about like we sketch and wireframe, our ideas and we want to test as soon as possible because we want to start validating before we spend too much time or effort. And then comes the visual design and building and we keep measuring and iterating. And now Beth is going to talk about our first example. Oh, I'm sorry, the institutional blockers.

So we came up with the idea for this because so often at work, we have great ideas and we want to put them out in the world and then the reality sets in us too. Can we actually do this? So there are I wrote down a few of the reasons why it might not happen. We may not have research resources to validate our ideas. We may be operating within a traditionalist mentality, whether it be from the newsroom side or higher upside or a marketing side. We may not even have a plan to research or present our work even in the very initial stages of testing prototypes. We have may have organizational design and maturity I don't know about you, but as a longtime designer, I've seen this in a lot of organizations that have gone into you go in and say I would love to be able to do this, this and this and it's just there's no understanding of, you know, the value of design or anything like that, you know, or the capacity to be able to do it. Reservation reservations from higher ups again, platform restrictions. Budget is the biggest one usually. And staff resources, you may not have enough people to do it. So we like to you know, as product designers, it's important for us we're not just UX designers. We're not just graphic designers. For us, our holistic approach to product design is always having to operate within business interests. So it's important for us to be realistic about the blockers that we're going to encounter from the beginning so that we can develop systems and processes that can overcome them. This is our first example of one of the projects that we've done recently. This is a design that was worked on by the app team including LD over there who has left us that's Lindsey George. She's now at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. So this is a widget that we use to project the results of the Philadelphia Democratic primary in real time. We already had this information. We had a feed coming in from Associated Press and we had a whole landing page in our election Guide, which I don't know if you had a chance to go to. There was a session this week about our election guide. It was called every voice. I think it was really great but this was something that we tested. It's never been done before, as far as we knew. And it was capitalizing on a new product that Apple adds on which is widgets, and lock screen widgets. So notification legit. Excuse me. Notification widgets and lock screen widgets. So you can see here, I think maybe this is playing but this was the widget that came in and it updated in real time it directed to the voters guide. And then we also had this widget that would operate as when you touch the top of it. So there's two different forms for this and it was written up in Nieman lab is being innovated, which I was really excited about. It was very well taken. And it's something that capitalizing on the advances that Apple makes is something that we really want to do as product designers because every time you use a new feature that they're trying to push that gives you some extra juice and push to have those things work and have them be noticed. You know the novelty of capitalizing on something people haven't seen before on a device that almost everybody has in their hands is really powerful I think and next thing is going to talk us through her example.

Thank you. So one of the things our service desk does is reviewing restaurants cafes and bars in and outside of Philadelphia. And we know that something loved by our audience, and we also know by talking to our customers, that they're also using apps like Google Maps and Yelp to find out like where to eat where to go so this is something I worked on with my coworker Carrie bagel here that we're taking all of this information in our and bringing it in a map form in the app where users can see all of these restaurants cafes and bars. In the map. And they can filter through like whether they want branch cheesecakes like whatever like they want to filter as and they can see you know, like the name, address information phone number website and our review that we have. And we're not creating anything new we're not adding any new information here. We're just taking everything that's already on our site created by our service desk. And we're just changing the platform so that users can see this in a way that that's more engaging for them. And then Beth is going to talk about our worship exercise.

Okay, so we're gonna have a workshop today where we all brainstorm together. We wanted to have everybody sit in teams, we do have like, paper that you can write on. But we also have a mirror board that everybody can engage with as well. What we'd love for you to do is think of some content that you already have at your publication and take that and think of maybe a new way that you could do it and like sanem said, there is no bad ideas, no wrong ideas. You know, try to think above your institutional blockers and then once you have the ideas in place, then think about can we actually implement this, what would stop us from implementing this? How will we measure it etc. So, let me just go ahead and bring the this is a QR code for the mural board. If anybody wants to scan it, I don't know if you can see that. We have I think, you know, we did not have the right approach at this presentation. Background music.

I just want to say I just want to say if you can't access the mural board, we put some handouts on the tables. They have the same format so you can use those or Mira board whichever you prefer.

And how many teams do we have on that mural board. Also, I just want to go back to the beginning here because we do have a QR code if you're having trouble scanning Amuro board. This QR code is for our entire presentation. It's a little website. So if you need to just grab it off of your own device. You can scan the website and take it with you.

Okay

so what we're we'd like people to get together in groups as well. How many groups do we have? We have eight. We have eight groups on the Miro board so let's organize and get groups together. Oh, here Can everybody hear me? All right, I'm gonna make you get up Everybody get up. Let's get together. We have more than eight tables here 12345678 I cannot Yeah, yes, be friends get together

and if you have any questions, just let me and Beth know we'll come around.

Yeah, and be anyone needs any help. We're here for you.

Okay, I want to

create your five six that we got six.

Okay, all right. So over here, this is going to be table one, group one, group two. Over here's group three, group four, group five, and group six. We have two extra boards on the mural board. So you can just ignore seven and eight. Thanks for getting together guys. I really appreciate it. And I'd like you just to get started, you know go ahead and just start thinking about that content. And another way that you could do it. It could be based on you could do scroll retelling. You could go mobile first with your idea. What can you do? Oh yeah, at the end, we're going to ask one person from each group to stand up and talk about some of your better ideas, anything that you want to highlight that comes out of the brainstorm session. Go right ahead.

Can I do some

time?

Are you doing really

stands

out nobody knows.

Just is

to see

ya

years of service through a retailer yes

we can do like now

only an hour

away good to.

Meet you Yeah, yeah

I know going to show

you right Australia is crazy it was insane

So, everyone I just want to remind you that we have about 30 minutes for this workshop. So we're going to spend the first 10 minutes on the first step. We'll let you know when

for the first section so far take your time no rush guys. I just keep forgetting

short term for now. stay overnight. I don't know it was

I can't find your screensaver.

have a hard time discussing

it so funny searching for my sister's house

and you need to leave doesn't have to

but that's we're gonna have to get rid of that.

Something keeps

on working. Excuse

me like to deal with section 10.

says it's a next step. Next step is.

ideas

they go together. Honestly, Julius Julius probably cut them.

Two minutes which type of direction

yeah

show more of our customer support

right everyone if you haven't moved on to step two, please go ahead and do that. It's fine if you do all the steps together. That's you know working in order or is breaking boundaries too.

Yeah, collaborate Yeah. Feel free to sit down. Let me bring up the QR code for that. That's fine here. I have you can scan it right from here. See here right here's the QR code to the mural board.

Thank you for coming. Like thrilled to be here.

So now

I feel like I should be talking more with the other workshops that I've been to are like this too. Because if you turn them they're gonna stop and listen to

finally you can only want to forget about the floor in the suit not the security part is over. Next time I need to prepare so much more.

Process to panic and freak out these purposes

to know.

You and I do like a champagne. I love the idea of you doing champagne with you. But maybe let's do another day because also because of tonight if I start drinking now I won't recover from the show.

session we should get up so we can take a photo of this

stuff are.

Almost two

see you it seems to me to my mind session three because it's

to see

you next two sections if you haven't gone to section three yet, please move on to the third section.

Day my studio students raise

See you soon.

To see

you I think you guys are on national news out there. You might want to check right over there. That's why that's a bunch of Enquirer in Atlanta people at that table wherever you like go ahead and please It's totally fine.

To switch

Okay, let's talk about the next section. So use this writing to do house scripts

we can we can just be wise we can move on.

day they're actually going grocery shopping

evening okay everyone we have about five minutes left so you can choose your presenters. Get ready for your presenting.

On decided to do

To gonna say this

carries

1234

systems

looking at

Students.

says

Hey, everyone, we have about 20 minutes left for our session. How are we all feeling? Do we want to start talking? Good. Okay. So let's choose a speaker from our table. And let's start with group table one. Mic is coming our way

table one up first. Here we go. I'm testing these mics

Okay, table one everybody

okay. So

we everyone, excuse me one second table one's gonna present their ideas. So if everybody could be quiet for a second, I listen. Thanks so much. Okay, table one, go ahead.

Okay, so we we started with a topic, which was housing and affordable housing and then we delved into zoning laws and housing availability. So two brainstorm ideas that we had was the first one was historically house zoning laws have changed over time. With like some ideas of real estate statistics and markers, I would go with that. And so this would be, you know, we thought about both timelines and a map showing, you know, and with colors, how zoning changes and then how, you know, for example, the rate of residential versus commercial versus semi commercial housing has changed how ownership house housing ownership has changed racial disparities in housing ownership and renting and then we just dropped that idea completely. And we started talking about how it's really hard for renters and buyers to have an idea of what's available to them on the market. And could we scrape data from all of the private apps like Zillow apartment that calm Airbnb and also use like alternative housing data that I don't know where that is, but like, Could we have a publicly owned or media slash higher ed owned app that would show coops land trusts multifamily housing, rent to own land banks, empty lots that can be bought in groups, as well as like classic renting and and buying data from Zillow and apartment and Airbnb and stuff like that? And so on the so that was the idea section about data and new research well, I wrote down just words that don't mean very much, such as maps, experts, real estate. And then a timeline is a slider tool. But yes, there's existing useful data. The big question is could we are we able and throughout states would we be able to scrape legally data from all of these apps? And how would you be able to acquire that we were talking about how but between Colorado and Utah laws on, you know, what data on housing you have are very different. Um, so that would be something that we'd have to think through. And in terms of new research, like anything related to alternative housing, like multifamily units, rent to own land bands, land, Trust's co ops, that would be some sort of new research. And I personally, I'm very interested in that because I've never seen it and it's really when I hear people say, Oh, I live in a co op, I make $200 and I live with my 20 best friends and 20 different apartments and we have this garden. I'm like, How did you find that? And they're like, Oh, my great aunt was you know, this really weird lady and so that's how I got it. And so I I feel like this would be a way to also diversify and, and democratize alternative housing ideas. And this is it. Thank you.

Thank you so much, great ideas. I love that it's based on finding different sources of data and compiling. Let me bring this over to table to who's our speaker over here. Okay, table to everybody.

Yeah, so we brainstormed around a real client that I have in a real problem I have so I appreciate the free labor I got from this session today. So I work with a newspaper out in Arkansas. And one of the big things going on right now are essentially school vouchers that some families can use to go to a private school, a charter school public school, religious school, that creates a lot of controversy using public dollars for religious schools. I'm sure you guys saw the headlines. But one of the really practical problems is a large group of the 7000 families that are eligible this year don't know they're eligible. And there's some confusion around who will be eligible in the following years and just kind of generally like, what the heck, where can I even send my kid to school? And so we had a bunch of really great ideas, but we landed on a quiz format, where you can click some buttons and find out if you're eligible. Based on the current state criteria. The team had a really good point that that could open you up to some legal problems if we're wrong on the quiz. So we're gonna really hedge the language and make sure we direct them to state websites after the quiz so they can verify for themselves if they're eligible. In his paper also has kind of a staffing shortage, as I'm sure many papers do. So we're trying to kind of think small, and do a prototype and then possibly extend it in the years to come. And then kind of for the data, we did talk a little bit about these quarterly reports that are supposed to come out after this bill gets passed. And that could be a really good source of new data stories, seeing if it's actually working like if are people actually getting these vouchers and are they using them to go to higher quality schools?

Great ideas. I love that you guys are trying to solve a real problem. This is table three.

Hi, so our idea that we were looking at was one that I'm at The Washington Post's everyone Briana, and we were looking through campaign finance stories, which are some of the most interesting I might um, some of them are just not very interesting to get through. And I'm a politics editor and I still kind of have to force myself to get really deep into the numbers. So we were thinking about some of the campaign finance stories that are existing in the way that we cover them and how we can make them more relevant interesting to people from an educational standpoint, but also just how much money and other issues that could be tied into it. So one of the ideas was to actually have a like visual design money pot of the candidates that is a tracker that we'll be working with. Not annual filings, but their quarterly filings that they say that they raised but also when we ask and report with their campaign teams, what they tell that us that they've raised and be able to track some of the issues that might be tied into their like flight tracker or their flight emissions or their carbon footprint or the way that they are not just raising the money but how that money is being raised and what other kinds of movements around it that can make a really big issue for someone. Yeah, and the iteration that Embree will take

so the problem we realized with the campaign finances is that they're not it's not live data, right. So it like comes out a lot. Of it comes out after the election. So we start thinking about what we could do leading up to the election that could be like something that people would care about. And then we started talking about private jets and carbon emissions, especially this year. Some of us in the south in the east coast have felt climate change California, Hawaii, of course. So we were thinking we track down Twitter guy who is actually Jack Sweeney. Elon jet. For those who are on x. He is a 20 year old student who has a proprietary proprietary like emissions tracking account. And so collaborating with him, we would theoretically measure the co2 emissions level of each candidate. So the thinking is that if you're a lot of voters are single issue voters, and so if climate change and emissions and environmental concerns are your single issue, this tracker would theoretically update every week with the two party candidates and how much emissions are going in and the final result would be released the week of the election. So if this is your single issue, it's like giving you a data point to work with. But then we also thought of iterations. I really like the accountability journalism. Part of this is that I work at the Wall Street Journal. So I was thinking the iteration I would be really interested in is any CEO, hedge fund manager, any finance executives that purports to say they really care about climate change? We would start tracking their emissions immediately, and just have it going. So we can see if they're putting their money where their mouth is.

Right, yeah, great idea. Sorry. There it is. I love that that's so vital and important and such a great idea. Table four is right here who's speaking anybody?

Alright, so we did not go through this full process with one product. We threw out a bunch of things and a very fruitful conversation. So a couple of the things that we ended up with was like, how to break down like super long investigative articles, either, you know, completely reimagining them with vertical video, how to reimagine, like video in newsletters, like how might we actually play a video with the newsletters or use push alert to, you know, press down and whatnot. At some point, we threw out an app idea for for sort of accountability, consumer accountability. So what if we had an app where if you like, went to the grocery store, you could, you know, hold it up to a complete section of foods and it would flag like, what what foods were like add for human or like what companies are bad for human rights or had recalls recently or you know, had worker issues or whatnot. So yeah, we went through a bunch of things though. I'm gonna pass the lie for some high degree right, we didn't fully like it out. ideate out. One idea, but I think what we realize is that we're really quick to just sort of jump to the problems with an idea and that's not usually helpful. So it's more helpful to talk about all the possibilities or what we wish were true, even if it's not possible right now, and then work from there. We also were talking a lot about video and just how important it's going to be and we have to get away from the traditional text format, even if we still have a text with something. So that's it.

All right, good for given. Thanks so much. Okay, we're on to group five and we go this way. I'm so excited about all these great ideas that everybody's talking about today. I'm gonna bring this over to you. We have five

we took a similar approach to table number four. So thanks for going before us table number four. We had a lot of different ideas. We come from a lot of different types of organizations. So I think the general blanket statement here for three ideas is that we're looking at some topics that are like not the sexiest at first glance, things like the state budget, hyper technical scientific innovations, even like archived articles that are from like, you know, decades. And decades ago. How can we make these ideas interesting? So we came up with a bunch of different ways we can do this, we can gamify it gamify things like seek budgets. So someone talked about a quiz earlier. Quizzes are cool and fun. We can think about things like election trading cards with each politician who has a trading card. And then similar to table number three, can we have a tracker where we track what a politician promises and an election versus what they deliver? And then towards the end of this conversation, we started thinking about like, Okay, if we do away with all the bells and whistles, what about like classic data vis pie charts, bar charts, some sometimes those like, communicate what we need very simply and effectively. And then when it came to validating these ideas, thinking about like, is there a way that we can do the story, the simplest way and see if it moves the needle and then like, iterate after that? Or, you know, can we engage with readers surveys and polls and really understand like what our audience wants from things that we have to cover, like state elections? Yeah, I think that covers it.

Okay, thank you. So much. And we're Andhra last group, group six the speaking here

thank you so much.

Okay, so a big thank you to group four and group five for setting the stage. We clearly got more disorganized as the group swim. Higher and number. No, we did this similar thing. We kind of tossed around a bunch of different ideas, including how to make investigative and longer form pieces. more digestible, we discussed explainer videos. We tossed around the idea of modular journalism. So offering the same article in a few different formats depending what you want to get out of it. Offering a separate link for or breakout section for really practical takeaways. If you're reading this, and you're at this in this situation, here's what you need to know. Breaking out really compelling personal stories in short form video for social to act as teases. For these kinds of pieces. You've invested a lot of time in. What else we talked about? I brainstormed something that I'm working on currently, which is trying to find new audience and repurposing a few years worth of a food column that profiles people in the food industry in my city and doing that with a newsletter that groups on based on theme and then you get an evergreen newsletter sent to you once a week so trying to draw a new audience and loyalty that way repurposing essentially existing content that way.

All right. Yep. So and also other ways to repurpose existing content like if you have something all under one theme, can you create a map out of it other ways for people to explore that existing content about its own existing app? easier ways to search through a series when you have that kind of critical mass of articles?

Oh my goodness, it's like this happened two days ago, okay. And we also discussed how to make COVID reporting more interesting. And also trying to get people to pay attention to it if we are unfortunately, going to be looking into increased COVID reporting again, so are there ways to attract eyeballs on that, for instance, making interactive data visualizations that you can personalize to your own? situation? And even having easy forms that people can fill out? To kind of democratize ideas on what we should be covering who are missing? Which story angles are we not covering? Apparently I did okay. So I'm gonna stop.

Can we give another round of applause to everyone that participated? Give yourselves a round of applause. Thank you so much. I really appreciate everybody coming to this session. Zeynep and I are both kind of new at speaking and we're thrilled that you're here. And thank you so much for being a part of this. We do have right up here because we're UX designers. We can't get away without putting a form of so we do have a little data collection if you would like and it's really just related to everything that we did today. different articles that might inspire you. There's some questions there. Feel free to you know, fill it out or not. And if you want to leave your email, then we will send you responses as well. And thank you so much. I want to give a big round of applause to Cena, who did amazing on her first time here, first time speaking. And I I want to thank everyone for coming especially my co workers from the Enquirer and previously from the Enquirer. Thank you so much. Thanks, everybody.

We're gonna be here for a little bit more if anyone has questions. Thank you.

Yeah. Oh, and just so you know, after this one, let me I'm gonna go back to the beginning because you can have this entire presentation in the website right here. So if you want to scan that everything that we did today, the mirror board the form and everything is in our presentation website. So if you want to take that with you, thanks so much. Thank you. And please do reach out to us. On Twitter and LinkedIn, we'd love to connect with all of you.

Okay, we did it

so much. Thank you so much. Less than Yeah, we're thrilled that you're that people came we're really openers on this one. But yeah, it's good to say hi, that's how I've never met you in real life.

So she she was our homework. Oh, yes, I

do. Yeah, well, we have

I need to give you a real

mind. If you have any, like questions or talk about anything, please. Thanks.