Generative research study - Synopted News
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This is an ethnographic research study I had designed and conducted for Synopted News to understand the needs and behaviours of news readers in urban and rural India.
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Generative research study - Synopted News
- 8. KEY FINDING: SEEK NEWS People are task-oriented and seek breaking news information first. People are primarily taskoriented, rather than explorationoriented, when searching for information and news. People actively search for information that is either expected to help them in their daytoday tasks or that is eventbased breaking news. Contextual information, like deep dives, opinion editorials, historical information, is often sought as a consequence of taskbased searches. This is perhaps because contextual information requires a greater investment of time, mental energy, and possibly even higher data usage, to process.
- 9. KEY FINDING: SEEK NEWS There is no single source of news and information that meets all the needs of a single reader. People mix and match news and information sources to learn about a story. For example, a reader might follow this pecking order for finding news: For international news: BBC, Al Jazeera, New Yorker, and so on. For national news: NDTV, Scroll.in, and The Hindu, and so on. The reader might turn to other sources for hyperlocal news and contextual information. This might be further supplemented with information from social media and aggregators. There is no single source that meets all of a readers’ information needs. People are very sophisticated in recognising when to search for further information and piecing information together from multiple sources.
- 10. KEY FINDING: SEEK NEWS People rely heavily on search-led browsing. Google’s search results are deeply trusted. Some people who are deeply interested in a subject go to a URL by typing it in directly. So, cricinfo for cricket news, BBC for international news, Financial Times for stock information. But often, people are not very particular about what brand they’re getting their information from, so long as it appears at the top of their search results. People might still find well cited information useful, say from a new brand like Scroll.in or a crowdsourced brand like Wikipedia, but may choose to supplement or back it by verifying it against sources they trust. News brands build a reputation of trust over decades. For new digital brands, this time may be significantly shorter. Examples include vox.com, FiveThirtyEight, Quartz, Scroll.in.
- 11. KEY FINDING: SEEK NEWS Successful news brands evolve with the changing habits of their readers. Priya, a 26yearold marketer, wakes up checks her emails and messaging app notifications on her smartphone. She browses for information on marketing trends on Twitter while commuting to work. She reads international news idly online but picks up the day’s edition of The Times of India in her office for national news. After returning from work, she tunes into the evening news show at 9pm on Times Now. Once a week, she spends five to ten minutes reading an oped she picks from an aggregator app. Like Priya, people often consume news and information throughout their day, in varying contexts. No single news brand can cater to a person’s information needs, but they can become an integral part of one of their information routines. A successful news brand often becomes a seamless part of a readers’ habitual consumption of information.
- 12. KEY FINDING: INTERNET USE Personal devices and constant access to the internet is not yet the norm. India has an aspiration, swelling economic middle class. For people with internet access in rural areas and those raising their economic status in urban areas, it is common to share devices within a family unit. The primary touchpoint for the majority of internet users, particularly in rural India is smartphones, rather than shared laptops and desktops. Smartphones, usually low to midrange Androids like LG, Micromax, early generation Samsung, are passed down among family members.Computers, usually low to midrange desktops or laptops running the Windows OS, are found in schools, internet centres, and offices. Lack of individual access to the internet is not seen as a barrier or constraint. Only the wealthy have individual access to the internet on higherend smartphones and computers..
- 13. KEY FINDING: INTERNET USE Mobile devices are preferred for light use. Desktops and laptops for heavier use. India has some of the lowest internet speeds in the world and data packs are often heavily capped. The average broadband speed is 3.5Mbps for desktops and laptops, and could be capped at 8 to 100GB per month. For mobiles, small data packs for 2G or 3G cost anywhere from Rs 200 ($34) for 2GB per month and can be topped up. Furthermore, memory prints for mobile devices are often under 8GB. This means that people are very picky in their choice of apps to keep on their phones. A behaviour that was observed was to download heavier apps like e commerce apps, make a purchase, then delete it immediately thereafter, freeing up space again. Space saving, lean apps, like Facebook’s Lite version for Android address this constraint. The most popular apps are for daytoday communication and messaging, particularly Facebook and WhatsApp. A consequence of the expense and data limitation of using the internet is that mobiles are preferred for light use and desktops and laptops for bandwidthheavy, memoryintensive use, like streaming videos, accessing educational content etc. Offline sharing of information is also very popular as a result, with people downloading interesting, important content to share it with others.
- 14. KEY FINDING: INTERNET USE By default, people expect to use the internet in English, even if they are not very proficient in it. About 10% of India’s population, about 130million people, is Englishspeaking. The number of Internet users in India, about 350million in 2015 according to World Bank, is expected to double in the next few years, with the biggest growth coming from rural India. A large percentage of this is expected to be users who are not proficient in English. Nonetheless, it was observed that people do not expect to use the internet in languages other than English, with low availability of content either originating in local languages or being translated into local languages. People default to English, using translation services like Google Translate as a guide when necessary. This can be a real constraint.
- 15. KEY FINDING: LEARNING Learning to use the internet is often a social activity. People often learn to use the internet and new tools on it from peers, family, and friends. There is little formal education on tech and the internet. With sharing and passing down of devices being common, learning to use them becomes a social activity. There are 2 patterns of tech learning observed: 1. Parents teaching their kids to use the devices they use. This is common among those in the upper middleclass, in particular. 2. Kids teaching their parents to use the devices they purchase for them, particularly when they leave home. There is often high motivation in the parents of such kids to learn to use communication apps like Skype and WhatsApp.
- 16. KEY FINDING: LEARNING Men heavily influence women’s tech behaviours. According to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, in 2015, about 29% of India’s internet users were women. In rural India, only 12% of internet users are women. Men heavily influence whether the women in their family will have access to the internet and their choice of devices and tools to do so. The internet is perhaps the greatest learning tool of the last century, but it’s not universally viewed as such. Some women mentioned that they believed they wouldn’t find a use for the internet before they learnt about the various ways in which it could help them in their lives.
- 17. KEY FINDING: LEARNING Educators heavily influence tech, information and news tools used by their students. Educational institutes and students often have conflicting views on whether the internet is a reliable source of information. Particularly in secondary education, textbooks and material provided by the educational institutes are seen as complete. The internet is seen as potentially supplementary to it. At the undergraduate or graduate levels, the attitude toward relying on the internet for educational information changes a bit more favourably. People trust, in the longterm, tools that were recommended to them by educational institutes. As an example, at a tertiary education level, Wolfram Alpha is recommended as a source for maths, but Wikipedia is not recommended as anything but a starting point to learn about a topic.
- 19. CONSTRAINT Task-oriented, search-led browsing makes it difficult to establish a new publishing brand. The majority of internet users are taskoriented, making searches that are timely, eventbased, and likely to have a direct impact on their lives. Contextual information is usually sought to supplement such eventbased information. There are established news publishers that dominate eventbased search results and social media feeds. It’s likely extremely difficult for a new publishing brand to acquire readers, let alone build trust and brand loyalty.
- 20. CONSTRAINT Retention is extremely difficult for a new publishing brand and requires user research. People usually consume news and information as a matter of habit. Habitually checking their phones during their commute, or turning to TV news stations after dinner, and so on. For news publishers, it becomes important to study the complex tech and information habits that readers form and meet readers where they already are, rather than only trying to lure them to the publishers’ own platforms. For example, building dedicated news apps may not be useful for a publisher if the majority of internet users have smartphones with low memory prints that they dedicate to messaging, social media, and entertainment apps. Could a publisher serve readers share timely, interesting content through WhatsApp or simple text messages instead? Would morning email newsletters containing the day’s news have greater retention than a website?
- 21. CONSTRAINT/ OPPORTUNITY Monetisation through advertising cannot come at the expense of user experience. Mobile is increasingly becoming the readers’ device of choice for casual browsing. People often use mobile devices with memory prints often under 8GB, internet speeds under 3Mbps, and severe caps on their monthly data usage. In such cases, excessive advertising isn’t just unpleasant, but choking to memory, bandwidth, data. Monetisation remains a crucial problem for publishers to solve and must not come with the sacrifice of the readers’ experience and trust. While paywalls remain an unrealistic option for new publishers who’ve yet to build trust, moderate advertising in combination with sponsorships and valueadding services may be viable. An example of a valueadding service is theSkimm, an NYC based news company, that offers a paid Calendar app to help readers stay uptodate with important cultural events.
- 22. OPPORTUNITY Build digital news products for niche customer segments, rather than a “mass audience”. The first principle of journalism is to help people be well informed about the world so they can make better decisions for themselves and their communities. It is unlikely that use of novelty tech like VR/AR/drone/bots and so on will help journalism serve its purpose in a changing digital landscape, rather it is understanding the needs and habits of readers that are crucial to designing news experiences of today and tomorrow. Treating news like a tech product, rather than a content service prioritises the practice of user research and product strategy in the organisation. News is often thought of as catering to a mass audience and user research is seldom done. Online, information is a commodity and the user’s experience in finding and consuming it is paramount to understand. Digital news does not cater to a mass audience, it is important for publishers to shift from the “onetomass” mindset to the “onetoone” mindset. This will help in serving readers news that is relevant and important, while evolving as their reading needs and habits do.
- 23. OPPORTUNITY Partner with educational institutes to promote critical news analysis among young readers. People learn to use the internet and information tools in a social setting, often from loved ones. Educational institutions continue to recommend standardised textbooks, along with some supplementary material from sources like Wolfram Alpha for maths, IEEE for engineering, and so on. There is an opportunity here to test a product that deconstructs and contextualises news and current affairs for young readers. A B2B2C model of partnering with educational institutes to promote critical analysis of news might stimulate adoption. If successful, such a publisher builds trust among readers from a young age, who may promote its use among their loved ones.
- 24. OPPORTUNITY Cater relevant news to underserved communities. It is imperative that publishers find niche customer segments to study, and then tailor their news content and experience for their needs and behaviours. Some underserved communities that were recognised include engaged and savvy teenage readers, career focused young women, farmers and traders living in rural India. There is opportunity to solve deeply painful problems in presenting timely, relevant and important information to underserved communities. For instance, in rural India, there was no real source observed for hyperlocal news. There was also rapidly growing smartphone usage. What news information is crucial to people in rural India to receive? Perhaps prices of commodities for better trade, more timely weather forecasts, information on government schemes, local crime reports, and so on. Could such news information be served to them via WhatsApp? There is opportunity to test products that provide relevant and important information to underserved communities.