ADI - VISUAL STORIES
UX RESEARCH | UX DESIGN | UI DESIGN
PROBLEM
Users were extremely frustrated with photo galleries and slideshows on Advanced Digital Inc (ADI) operated sites. ADI websites include: nj.com, nola.com, masslive.com, and more.
SOLUTION
The user dissatisfaction with slideshows and galleries were deeper than the interface. Through user research and interviews with reporters, it became apparent that ADI’s tools for reporters were not flexible enough to create compelling content. My solution was a tool that would allow reporters to create a more fluid type of content, ranging from all text to all photos, and everything in between.
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PROJECT BACKGROUND
The goal of this project was to explore why photo galleries and slideshows on ADI’s sites were such a pain point for our end users, and then find an elegant and engaging new solution.
Galleries were being used to display groups of photos to users. Reporters could add these galleries to written articles, and a similar display (called a Multimedia Slideshow) could be used as stand alone content.
PROCESS
I took over this project from a coworker who had done extensive research into the end users, and their pain points regarding the slideshows and galleries on ADI sites.
My team and I developed a beta version of a new UI that we could put in front of users. I used usertesting.com to conduct usability and satisfaction tests on the beta. I iterated on the design based on the feedback I received from these tests. After a few rounds of testing and iterations, we released the beta to a small section of our users on one of our live sites. I worked with the analytics team to track success, and a development team to continue implementing iterative changes. We found that changing the orientation and UI of the galleries improved usability and satisfaction.
Through our testing, I found that a mere facelift of the current UI did not fix the root of the user dissatisfaction. Users found the galleries and slideshows unnecessary, often irrelevant to the content, and way more trouble than they were worth.
I needed to understand the reporters who created these slideshows to learn how we could create an interface that would allow them to tell their stories more effectively and further engage their audience.
While I continued iterating on the end user experience, I conducted surveys and in-person interviews with reporters to collect as much insight as I could into the different ways the reporters were using photography to tell stories.
SOLUTION
It became clear that there was a spectrum of content types ranging from written articles that used photographs as supplementary content, to stories that were centered entirely around the photographs themselves, and everything in between.
In addition to improving the end user interface, I proposed giving reporters the flexibility to simply add and subtract text and image elements from the page, which creates almost unlimited ways reporters can deliver visual and written content to users.
A version of this design is still in development.
