Outcome
GRAHAM is an internal story performance tool that empowers reporters and editors to access engagement, traffic, and revenue metrics for published stories and topics. I partnered with the analytics product team to conduct research, consult on design direction and provide a navigation framework that improves how the newsroom accesses this data. Through regular check-ins with product and stakeholders, we have more closely aligned GRAHAM with the publishing tools ecosystem with shared integrations and design patterns.
GRAHAM was managed by another product squad, but I knew it would be used across the newsroom alongside our other publishing tools. In order to keep our team focused on existing priorities while also expanding our impact, I acted as a design consultant for the GRAHAM team by conducting research, sharing insights, and finalizing design recommendations with my team.
I conducted six discovery interviews with reporters and analysts to better understand how they were currently optimizing stories and measuring performance.
Better understand how newsroom data analysts and curators and using metrics in their day-to-day workflows.
Better understand how story analytics inform and guide newsroom decisions.
Inform a design strategy for article analytics that is informed by newsroom needs.
"It is the longer term view that is actually important here. It's not the short term view.” -Section Editor
"I'm really interested in like how we can plan, how we can use this data to help us plan, not just see how we've done." -Section Editor
"Taxonomy…has the most opportunity for us [to] identifying those trends that we can't see." -Section Editor
"If other people have like lessons like this, yes, that would be fantastic. I am always trying to use data to optimize my…column." -Reporter
Following my user research, I presented early wireframes with an overall information architecture, and layouts for a landing page, content insights and topic insights. I recommended the top story performance metrics to include based on discovery research and provided color recommendations within our design system for data displays.
To continuously improve GRAHAM’s user experience, we established a bi-weekly meeting to chip away at the design audit and collaborate on new functionality. I explored improvements to the landing page, in-page navigation, a more accessible color palette, and search workflows.
In the final iterations, we incorporated a header and sidebar from the Creator Design System to improve primary and in-page navigation flows. The updated wireframes also incorporated tabs and drawer CDS components to support custom article search.
GRAHAM moved out of beta in Q3 of 2023 incorporating many of my recommendations based on our team’s established design patterns. The tool's adoption and functionality continues to grow with over 300 newsroom users actively providing feedback.
“Graham has been an incredible addition. I'm particularly grateful for the plug-in that makes it so easy to look up data for any given story."
“Graham is a fantastic tool, and I appreciate being able to use the Insights tab."
“The search function in GRAHAM has been an excellent addition!”
“The Graham topic tags are interesting and I appreciate the breakdown by user type.”
While supporting GRAHAM, my interest in newsroom analytics grew. I joined a cross-functional working group focused on improving data transparency at the Post. I proposed a consistent visual pattern to ensure company-wide metrics were recognizable and consumable across all touch points.
The Metrics that Matter landing page was an extremely collaborative process with the working group, brand, and product design teams. The working group helped me incorporate critical needs from analytics leadership, while the brand team ensured our graphics followed corporate communication guidelines.
