the experience of creating g1 - matching business goals and user needs

March - 2007 The experience of creating G1 - Matching business goals and user needs 1

The experience of creating G1 - Matching business goals and user needs

Laura Lessa - March 2007


AGENDA

• Business goals

• Researching the background

• Information Architecture

• Usability Test


BUSINESS GOALS


BUSINESS GOALS

•Achieve the leadership among the news portals in Brazil in one year after launch (unique users and page views)

•Concentrate and display the multimedia content produced by the Globo media group

•Reflect the most recent trends present in news websites (citizen journalism, user-generated content, folksonomy)

•Achieve the brand recognition compatible with the Globo media group (leadership in all areas)

• Reach R$5 millions from advertising revenue in the first year and R$ 8 millions in the second year


RESEARCHING THE BACKGROUND



• 7.5 million users of the category (IBOPE, January 2006);

•Men aged 25-34 years old was the biggest demographic group;

• Compared to the average, the level of study of users was higher (undergraduates, postgraduates);

• Students, teachers, self-employed qualified professionals and executives were the most common occupations;


•Breaking news were pointed as the most valuable content in a news portal;

•Local services (weather, traffic, maps) were missed in the other news portals;

•Subject divisions (news sections) are well understood;

•Exclusive content is considered very valuable;



•Content from other Globo companies (TV, newspaper, magazines) means credibility;

•In-depth content perception is important for quality evaluation of the news portals;

•Multimedia content means richer content;

•Lack of information delivery platforms (RSS, mobile phones, PDAs, desktop widgets);

•User participation alternatives are unexplored.



DEVELOPING THE INFORMATION

ARCHITECTURE


PRINCIPLES TO DEVELOP THE IA

Breaking news should have a significant position in the information hierarchy


Subjetc division must follow the patterns of news portals

HOME G1

BRAZIL SCIENCEARTS & CULTURE

POLITICSECONOMY TECHNOLOGY



Subject division should be apparent in the information blocks



Main navigation menu should expose all the subjects, services and information in the website



Multimedia content highlighted, organised and clearly related to other Globo brands



G1 should be the news central of Globo.com portal

GLOBO.COM

CENTRAL DE NOTÍCIAS (G1)

CENTRAL DE ENTRETENIMENTO

ESPORTES (GLOBO

ESPORTE.COM)

GLOBO ONLINE

ÉPOCA

JORNAL NACIONAL

ESPORTEESPETACULAR

SPORTV

AUTOESPORTE

BIG BROTHER

EGO

SÉRIES DE TV



Search for in-depth information should be easy



Cross-navigation would be encouraged



PRINCIPLES

Local services and weather forecast sections would be part of G1


PRINCIPLES

Information available to different platforms (mobile phones, PDAs, desktop widget, RSS)



USABILITY TEST


ParticipantsBased on audience metrics and target audience

Perfil para o Recrutamento no Teste de Usabilidade do G1

9 men 7 women

7 Women:3 women 20-25 years old4 women 26-30 years old

9 Men:2 men between 20-25 years7 men between 26-30 years

50% dial-up Internet 50% broadband

50% Globo.com susbcribers 50% subscribers of other ISPs

16 people:


UT - HOME

BREAKING NEWS

VÍDEOS

•Updating frequency isn’t clearly realised by users. Several suggestions to highlight news updates;

•Chosen as the most important item of a news portal.

•Difficulty to find the “GloboNews Ao Vivo” box. When found, the live video was mentioned as very valuable;•Embedded videos were appreciated and there are no observed problems regarding video controls;• Users noticed a significant presence of videos in the product.


UT - PORTAL NAVIGATION BAR

PORTAL NAVIGATION BAR

The portal navigation bar was understood by some users as part of the navigation of G1. They clicked on the “Home” tab in order to access G1’s homepage and on the “Videos” tab when looking for a video inside G1.RECOMMENDATIONLoose the “Home” tab (as below), since previous tests also showed that users understand that the Globo.com logo will take them to the the portal’s homepage.Visually detach the portal navigation from the websites’ content


STORY THEME IS NOT EASILY UNDERSTOODThe red area reserved for the story theme get mixes with G1 header and doesn’t seem to be part of the story

RECOMMENDATIONStudy the possibility of using a white background for the theme area, similar to the rest of the page

UT - STORY PAGE


CONFUSION BETWEEN CONTENT BLOCKSUsers struggled to understand the difference between “Related news”, “Read more” and “Everything about this theme”

RECOMMENDATIONSCombine “Related news” and “Read more” in one information block;

Use the name “Historic” instead of “Everything about this theme”. It was an expression commonly chosen by users that could describe this block correctly

UT - STORY PAGE


• Participants had no trouble to use the new photo galleries;

• They mentioned the large size of the photos and the possibility of having audio associated as extremely valuable.

UT - PHOTO GALLERIES


THANK YOU

http://[email protected]

the experience of creating g1 - matching business goals and user needs

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