NewsThings — where local journalism meets the Internet of Things
The NewsThings project — building connected new platforms for news — is a partnership of academics, designers, journalits and readers, backed by Google funding. John Mills, Researcher with UCLan’s Media Innovation Lab, explains
Over 15 months, the NewsThings project has explored the potential for the Internet of Things to provide new ways to connect with audiences, convey content or provide newsroom tools.
A Google DNI-funded collaboration between Reach Plc, the Media Innovation Studio at the University of Central Lancashire and creative agency Thomas Buchanan, NewsThings sought to create new products, services and experiences with users’ needs and requirements at the centre of the development process.
Categorised as a prototype project, we planned to work closely with both audiences and as a partnership to create a handful of prototypes that spoke to what the potential future of the ‘internet of journalism things’ could be. We wanted to move beyond existing products and platforms and imagine what a connected journalism thing could be, and how might it benefit audiences or journalists.
With Amazon Echo and Google Home two IoT devices that have reached tipping point, and are increasingly making their way in people’s homes, we asked what new devices could be created purely for journalism. But we wanted to take the process of innovation out of the lab, out of the newsroom and out of the design studio. We wanted to try a range of methods beyond data analytics and surveys to uncover new insights to design around.
We took people to the pub.
Workshops in Bristol and Manchester explored how audiences consume news, both via traditional means but also via a wide range of sources — the research team asked participants to consider what news and journalism, what types of information is most useful from them, and how they receive it. For example, conversations outside the schools gates or over the garden fence can be as useful as digital news content via local or national providers in conveying important information.
From these workshops and others, we were able to understand some key themes: a desire for positive news, better understanding the impact of local news and personalised content were key factors.
We were also taken aback by the levels of emotion that news and journalism prompted, particularly negative emotions.
The rationale for negative responses to journalism ranged across a number of prompts: the news topics covered and their ability to provoke anger, disappointment or frustration — a result of passionate feelings or beliefs. We also found negativity when users had a negative experience of the ‘platform’ news content was delivered upon.
This could be via the quality of content, or the experience it offered them. This presented an interesting challenge for the design team: how do you create compelling products and experiences when your audience responds negatively (and for sometimes good reason) to your core component? We also found from this stage was that evenings were an opportunity for audiences to approach content with more time and openness.
A further research exercise was borrowed from design research. ‘Cultural probes’ invite users to provide rich insights around a scenario or technology.
They involve tasks or challenges that users undertake and then feedback to the research team. We gave cultural probes to a selection of users with tasks involving:
- Capturing their day on film: we asked audiences, via a disposable camera, to capture news as and when they encountered it. We asked then to reflect on the process and to think of the potential ‘publicness’ of news.
- Avoid the news: is it possible, what does it feel like, what happens when you accidentally consume news?
- Go deeper: we asked people to find the source. Choose a story, but validate it, scrutinise it, find the original quote or info — and reflect on the process
- News-paper: we invited audiences to go to a newsagent, flip a coin and either paper they either liked or loathed, read it, choose an article and go and chat to someone about it.
In total there were 15 challenges, but with each user only receiving five. At the end of each day, users could also complete a debrief card to share their thoughts. All of this was geared to understanding audiences’ experiences of news.
We also held workshops at the offices of the Manchester Evening News to get key industry perspectives on the challenges and opportunities journalists and journalism face. From then, we came up with product and process ideas. Lots of them. We did this as a multidisciplinary collaboration, but Thomas Buchanan — as the creative agency on the project — went away and developed these. We then worked hard to narrow them down. We settled on three:
The prototypes
- ConeThing: envisaged as a newsroom tool, ConeThing shows how people feel about news stories. It monitors Facebook posts on a specific story, and tilts subtly to the right or left depending on was the user comments sentiment is, and to what extent. It aims to make data physical.
2. RadioThing: Utilising text-to-speech, RadioThing converts text from any news website into audio. It also allows users to filter content via sentiment. In addition to allowing audiences to filter by publisher, user can also can choose increasingly positive, increasingly negative or random pieces. It responds closely to the initial research: audiences want personalised content, and it gives them the agency to choose the tone of the journalism they consume.
3. PrinterThing: health and wellbeing were key themes from the research, as was personalisation. PrinterThing speaks to both these. Users can ‘pocket’ content throughout the day, potentially because they want to return to it later or because they don’t have time to read it deeply when they first encounter it. An hour before a user’s bedtime, PrinterThing prints a bespoke newspaper. It encourages users to turn off their devices, avoid blue light and remove distractions.
We then gave these to users for three or four weeks to test. The feedback was intriguing. ConeThing wasn’t welcomed. The interaction didn’t work for users, the data wasn’t developed enough (social media editors wanted finer grained detail: the velocity of the comments, information on key influencers, being able to interact with the device more directly. But there was something there — something around shared detail physically displayed in a newsroom that can provide a focus and communicate key information immediately.
For RadioThing, users like the concept, but the implementation (both the design and the quality of text to speech) needed further refinement to meet user demands. But, from a newsroom perspective there was a great opportunity with the text to speech to generate bespoke podcasts in a much more efficient way. Future work will look at creating hybrid podcasts where journalists contribute audio material, and RadioThing creates audio to connect the pieces, or fill other linking requirements. In this way, it’s a great example of R&D offering concepts and solutions that may manifest them in other ways.
PrinterThing garnered perhaps the most surprising response. There was some scepticism around a connected printer from within the partnership, but it was, without doubt, the most popular prototype with our small selection of testers. The majority loved it, and one offered to buy it. Users liked the physical print out, and they adapted our ‘before bedtime’ user journey. Some printed it just after eating in the evening, others concentrated their reading at the weekend. Personalisation and a more relaxed reading experience were positive themes. Not everyone was a fan, though. It seems that if offline, and longer-form reading doesn’t fit within your routine, it’s not readily welcomed.
What next?
All the prototypes need additional work, and we’re currently exploring how to take the best elements forward. Text to speech and sentiment analysis are core technologies that are translatable into different contexts, so we’re currently thinking about new projects where they can be tested and developed further.
IoT is a platform that’s not going away, and can be approached in a number of ways. Reach and the Media Innovation Studio are currently kicking off our SenseMaker project, which will use IoT sensing kits to provide primary data for journalists to use to build and develop data-driven journalism that is independent of third-party material. We’re excited about where this, and IoT journalism can take us next. Particularly when audiences are a central part of the innovation process.
