Fifth Beat

BACKGROUND I am the Design Manager of an international publisher of newspapers and magazines, active in Italy and Spain. RCS is the publisher of the most important general news daily newspaper in Italy and, among the others, of the most read sport news newspaper. OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE For what projects/services did your company hire Fifth Beat? One of our publications was going to completely redesign their news app. We hired Fifth Beat for helping us in the user research activities we needed for the project: an initial discovery research focalized on Personas development, and, after the design phase, a round of usability testing on the app prototype. What were your goals for this project? We wanted to investigate needs and behaviour of our readers in order to identify the functionalities of the app that could be useful for them, to increase app adoption, both in terms of new downloads and engagement on the app (time spent on visit, page views). SOLUTION How did you select Fifth Beat? We initially selected three vendors based on their expertise in the media/publishing sector and their knowledge of qualitative user research methodology. The offers were then evaluated both by our marketing department and procurement officer, who negotiated the economics side of the offer. We chose Fifth Beat because they had the best value for money offer and because of their deep knowledge of our market. Describe the project in detail. After closing the pitch, Fifth Beat set up the project team and arranged a kickoff meeting which objective was to share the research plan: target users, objectives, timing, and output. Then they conducted 14 moderated user interviews - they took charge of the recruiting and meeting room hire, and we also had the chance of following a couple of them. The raw material of the interviews was organized into 3 kinds of deliverables: Personas - which were the main output we requested. a document with the most important insights. a codebook with the transcription of all the most interesting quotes taken from user interviews, which supported the insights and personas documents, organized for the theme. The research helped us to decide which features develop (for example, a recommendation engine based on user interests and bookmark and notification features). Three months later, we completed the UI design of the new app and built an interactive mockup on Invision. Fifth Beat conducted a round of usability tests on the prototype, with 10 users. This time the main deliverable was a detailed usability report that described user difficulties and UI, navigation, and interactive elements that we should fix to improve the overall usability of the app. What was the team composition? The team assigned to the first part of the project was of 5 people: 4 researchers (head of discovery, a senior researcher, two junior researchers, and an account), while on the usability test phase worked on the project a team of 4 people (3 researchers and a senior UX designer) RESULTS & FEEDBACK Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success? I'm sorry but I cannot share metrics or company results. Anyway, we noticed a general improvement of main KPI's and better reviews of the app on app stores. How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs? Fifth Beat delivered both research activities in the agreed deadlines, even though they were very tight. What did you find most impressive about this company? I really appreciated the quality of the research deliverables: rich and very practical documents that we still use as a referral two years after the research was conducted. Are there any areas for improvement? I think that an aspect that could be improved is to better detail what is included in the offer during the negotiating phase