What if Product Thinking Became a Lifestyle? 7 Reflections from the #ProductImmersion Program
Last week, the Product Immersion for Small Newsrooms program at Newmark J+ kicked off, and I am extremely happy to be part of it. The program focuses on product thinking in newsrooms, and how to incorporate its approaches to design viable and sustainable products that target the right audience.
3 speakers spoke about different topics related to news product thinking. We had Anita Zeliena, board member at the News Product Alliance, and who I consider a true role model, Justin Ferrell, who focuses on organizational design and human centered strategies, and Bola Awoniyi, co-founder of Black Ballad, a media platforms that targets black women.
It’s still early in the program, but there is much to reflect on. In the following few lines, I would like to share 7 different points that resonate well with the new way I am thinking about managing a team in a newsroom, and at the same time, diversifying the way I think when it comes to media products.
- Never think about the final product. You should think about the need behind the final product. For example: don’t say “I wan to design a website”, rather, you should explore what is the main challenge the new website you are designing is going to solve, and that’s what you base your plan on. When we think about the final product, we tend to focus on its exterior look and feel, and that drags us away from the main point or target, which is the “audience need”. (I am a big believer in functional design, a concept we learnt at university, and I believe it follows the same path of the product thinking we are talking about here.)
- Every time we want to serve an audience, we tend to think of new types of content to create. If I want to talk to a younger audience about film in the Middle East, I usually think of videos, or social media cards that talks to them about film stars and new productions. However, thats not always true. Sometimes, serving the audience is not about content, its about making other changes in your existing process. Remember, at the end of the day, content is not the sole player in a newsroom or a media organization. There are so many other factors that make a difference when it comes to reaching out to your audience.
- Collaboration.. collaboration.. and collaboration to the power of infinity.. Nowadays, fields intersect in so many ways. Media and journalism is one of them. Sometimes, the need presented by your audience is not just about content, it could be a technical need, or a design need, or a user experience need. In many newsrooms, we are seeing more cross boarder collaborations, and more specialties are becoming part of a newsroom to serve the audience.
- Speaking of experience, I always loved trying new things, especially when it comes to content production. However, the mistake that I always did was: never take a step back and look at what you have done (and I mean a thorough look, not just a quick one). I was never able to evaluate or asses performance. I was never able to pinpoint the things that didn’t work and things that worked. So, even if evaluation is going to take you sometime, don’t eliminate it from the process of creating a product in your newsroom.
- Social media is not a magic wand. Your relationship with your audience should go beyond Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and you should start establishing a direct channel of communication with them. That is the only way you can build trust quickly with them. In our times, you need to have that trust for your content and products to live longer, and be viable.
- After thinking about all the above points, I decided that product thinking is going to be a lifestyle, not just an approach I apply in my work. I talked to my 2 boys about it, and with very minor daily details, we try as much as possible to adopt the ABC’s of product thinking to solve our daily problems.
- Remember that things take time. Not just to put a plan for using the approach of product thinking in your work, implement and then wait for the results to evaluate, its also about changing the whole culture inside your newsroom or media house. People are resistant to change, especially when it’s coupled with ambiguity, but hey, humanity headed to the moon, with no single idea of whats awaiting.
The next few weeks of the program are going to bring even more topics and excitement to my work on both a personal and a professional level. But if you have applied any of the product thinking approaches in your workplace, especially if you are in media or news, it would be great to share them with the rest of the world.