At Yle News Lab, we want to make sure we never forget to whom we develop our online services. Our goal is to understand and foremost serve Yle’s different audience groups even better. That’s why we have developed a set of methods and techniques to listen and learn from real people. Some of them are old, some a bit newer. Here is a short intro in our people first approach in service development and design.

1. We choose the target group and make sure we know enough

Asking is a good way to start. If the service is online, we ask its current users. We might publish the survey on-site, send a newsletter or an in-app notification. In addition, it’s always a smart idea to take a long look at the analytics. How are people using the site at the moment? What kind of features and content are most popular? What remains unused and unseen?

If the idea is to reach new audiences, it might be wise to commission a representative (segmentation) survey. A properly done survey can be used for multiple purposes and for a few years on.

2. We crowdsource the best insights

When the results and the analysis are there, we spend a full day with them and the whole multidisciplinary team. It’s a big effort, but it pays back: everyone has a shared data founded understanding. We try to solve questions like

• What kind of features the current users or the potential user segments value in the service?
• What kind of issues are they annoyed with?
• How do they feel about your brand?
• What would it take for them to fall in love with your content or service?
• Which target group would you prefer to fall in love with your content or service?

At this point it’s also wise to ponder around the measurable KPIs we want to set for the project.

3. We enter the awkward yet adorable test phase

Perhaps the most inspiring part of the project! Our methods include

• asking first impressions of a site layout (shown as a pdf pic on phone screen) in malls and/or bus terminals
• conducting user tests of a beta site in a windowless meeting room at the News Lab. The test is livestreamed to the opposite meeting room where the rest of the team is watching.
• getting to know the needs of a target group in a good ol’ mini focus groups of 3 to 5 people

We have also used the famous “go big or go home” approach and spent a full day co-creating with our users, one segment at a time.

We continuously try out new ways to understand people even better. As with the rest of the development process, the whole team is there to test and study the users.

4. The new site is online, and we still don’t stop learning

Naturally, we want to make sure our new service is good for the people we intended it for. As we still don’t get all the data we need from online analytics, we complete the picture with a survey targeted for potential users. We ask them to use the site for a week and to give us feedback. If their impression is good, or even better positively surprised and if the analytics figures are growing, we know we are onto something promising!