NYT Innovation Portfolio? Told you so...

A few years ago, I gave a talk at the Malofiej Conference about some nascent user research and design principles of graphics at BBC News. 

I concluded that :

a) design teams that do not understand their users will not be able to provide for them (still true but obvious)

and 

b) it is the design team (or indeed any respective department ) that needs to know it's value to the business (obvious to design companies - but less so to in-house departments)

They need to know why are people engaging with Their output? - and how much does it bring in? - they are not a 4 piece chamber quartet sat in the newsroom/ marketing dept playing accompaniments to afternoon tea after all.

...I noticed someone in the crowd (nameless, but by no means shameless) laughing/ shaking his head at this idea that designers need to know what ROI they provide to the business.

So it is interesting to see that the NYT are now doing exactly that (and not just with design but other NYT items/ products) - providing a portfolio of their work for advertisers to see minutes spent and numbers of users engaging.(nice place to bring it all together too - also speaks of the difficulty that news sites have in keeping all their timeless good stuff on show, before it is washed away by the daily stuff -  although it is maybe only industry folk who need it so?)

Creative industry workers are really bad at measuring the effectiveness of their work. Most would rather not risk it I reckon - best to just get on with it and avoid bright lights shone on you? 

Well, money concerns  are happening to journalism and can happen anywhere else - so it may time to consider your value to your business. Go and talk to the accounts department - they may have some ideas on how to do this - talk to anyone - before the auditors talk to you and you have no answer because you are 'just a designer'.

NYT Innovation Portfolio first seen on Chiqui Esteban's Infographics News

Comments

[Ciaran Hughes]

Over the last few years I've often wondered, as the design-led type of data-driven graphics beloved of the Guardian and the NYT sweep all before them in the awards and annuals, if what we are watching is simply the equivalent of what has happened in architecture over the last couple of decades.
About 20 years ago I used to go home past a series of low-level blocks of connected flats in a poor part of South East London. Built in the late 60s, they were now in a terrible state - damp, literally cracked and falling apart, the windows hanging out, the covered areas dark, vandalised and a mugger's dream. How anyone still, or had ever, lived there amazed me. Anyway the flats were pulled down soon after. But the amazing thing for me was that when a friend of mine ended up working for the architects who had designed them she told me that they had won many awards at the time of their construction. Yet 20 years later they were uninhabitable. But then who were the judges? Well, architects of course, the people who would never have to live in such buildings, the people least qualified to judge on application and function but most qualified to judge on aesthetics

[Max Gadney]

I think you are on to something.

I think that some data-vis is a little cold and offers few access points to the public at large.

Having said that, the NYT and Guardian are not mass market brands. They are for a smart audience, so they would say - but I agree that much of what they may do , demands an expertise with interactive tools that may be beyond many readers.

I am a fan of simple first steps in data vis applications. Previous posts have discussed good work in this area.

And maybe your pal was right to question experts on panels. I absolutely trust them to judge craft and innovation - two vital faculties for any profession - but whether these should be held up as what will get audiences in and make money is another thing.