Street journalism website

Providing the community with a voice. Experientia created a prototype of a citizen journalism website, Romagna Noi. The site is an information portal that offers news, useful information about the region, additional services and entertainment for La Voce di Romagna newspaper readers as well as for a new, wider user group.

After understanding the requirements for citizens to contribute content, Experientia designed a sophisticated website prototype browsable by time or locality, as well as a logo. In participatory co-creation sessions, users helped to design the content filtering system and to evaluate the website prototypes.

The website is now online at www.romagnanoi.it

Understanding
Experientia began the project by exploring and comparing emerging trends amongst leading news websites, to gain an understanding of what was important in designing the website structure, content and relationships, and exactly what local user requirements for a new information portal might be.

La Voce di Romagna newspaper had a clear understanding of their target users, but wanted Experientia to identify new users, and to understand: Which services would be of interest to potential new users? What sort of content, functionalities and applications should be integrated? What kind of look and feel? How could an optimal user experience in mass collaboration be created?

Beginning the user research phase, we carried out a “formative evaluation” (a process where people evaluate programs while they are being developed, to refine and improve them) to discover and verify the genuine needs of users of the new site. Card-sorting techniques were used to understand the way in which people would like to filter information, that is, to find what content should be associated to other content.

Some themes emerged strongly from the formative evaluation exercises, particularly the importance of local content and co-creation. People were enthusiastic about the ability to create content and add it to the site, but also wanted to have editors and site mediators suggest ways and modes to contribute.

Design
An initial vision of the interface was designed, which included the layout, graphic representations of navigation signals, organisation of the pages and the interrelation between the various functions of the site. This was used in a number of participatory design sessions, in which local potential users contributed to the creation, discussion and collaborative evaluation of the information architecture, ensuring that the design was truly user-driven, and satisfied local needs and desires.

Prototyping and Testing
This project also explored ways of combining agile development methods with user-centred design. Agile development is usually a fast-paced method, involving quick, short development phases, with a constant evolution of ideas. We wanted to fit these short phases together with user-centred design methods, which required in-depth sessions with potential users to co-design the website filtering system, as well as testing and evaluation sessions.

The analysis phases evaluated the visual experience, transmitted values, credibility and reputation of the new brand and the content structure of the prototype. The results then fed the development of the next prototype iteration.

An important feature of the concept prototypes was the element of content co-creation, envisioning the information portal as a social platform, with settings to personalise it for each user.

Early concept prototypes showed initial collaboration concepts, while more advanced prototypes in later iterations implemented and tested the content filtering methods that were a result of the participatory design sessions. The contents are filtered according to a classification system that was completely designed by the participants.

Then, based on the feedback of the participants in the co-creation sessions, a final prototype was designed, which was the basis for the final website.

Final deliverables
The website is currently active, and can be found at www.romagnanoi.it.

An additional outcome of the project was the confirmation of the viability of agile user-centred design methods to analyse users and user requirements. The successful combination of prototyping iterations with user testing resulted in a flexible and dynamic development process that was nonetheless driven and informed by users and user-needs.

Agile UCD to design the usability of an interactive news website (a presentation by Michele Visciola).