At the BBC, I spend a lot of time arguing about the balance of audience desires and the editorial voice of the BBC. There's a recent blog by Max Gadney which details, quite nicely I'd say, the BBC's position. Though frankly in a more user-centered way than much of the BBC.
So Dave Winer, someone who I quite respect and admire dives into a similar debate says here that he views programmers & journalists as being quite similar... neither particularly fond of users or allowing them to drive, affect their output - other than in prescriptive and limited forums and processes. I found a lot of my difficulties in my previous role in that article, journalists often believe in their absolute position as accurate arbitrar and communicator of the truth, to the detriment often, of listening. He is in then accused, though that's not how I read it, of going even further than I probably feel - into the realm of crowdsourcing editorial opinion - (something that anyone who's EVER been a member of a committe of more than 3 people knows is both impossible and guarantees mediocrity). However, I'd propose that actually that's not what he said at all, he was arguing for the point that we need to LISTEN to our users, carefully and critically. We need to listen to both what they say, AND what they do.
My mother-in-law's old business partner, a real estate broker used to say "buyers are liars" his customer's would say they hated Tudor, and then buy the 1st tudor house they saw. I've seen this more often than I can detail here. People are surveyed - "Would you buy this product X," - yes I would, they say or often, "naw I don't need a phone that big just for some giant screen... it wont fit in my pocket... " - then they see the advert, or better yet the product (iPhone) and before you know it everyone is making big-touch-screen-phones and punters are buying them by the dozens. Really, that's the point, however, isn't it? We need to listen, watch, think and analyze what the audience does, thinks and how they behave. They'll say they don't want feature X or they wouldn't really use it, but in actuality they will & do. Or they'll say I WANT that feature - but then in reality they NEVER use it. This is a CORE principal of user centered design and user research - one that I've worked to invoke at the BBC (in my old role).
However, I don't want to paint all the BBC as non-user centered, in fact, one of the most interesting things at the BBC, is something we call NEWS CPS (it's a combination CMS and presentation layer system + analytics platform) it gives real time data to journalists, changing their ability to integrate audience feedback with their reporting... it has a bad wrap, mostly as it was developed by hand and can be dodgey from time to time, but its vision, I think demonstrates some WORLD-Class thinking. However, I'd propose this is an exception and not a rule generally in the twin worlds of software & journalism, and some of those same journalists who have embraced the CPS system detest the BBC's homepage because it proves something we always feared, beyond a doubt... that people, generally, really want information about news, football, celebrities and the weather just about once a day.. The Basics are still true... in terms of demand on the homepage - and some within the BBC would say that's proof it has failed, rather than celebrate it's real power, to enabe that choice, and the personalization of their next 10 personalized selections.. I'd answer them by saying, +30% of our audience still personalize the page.. which is double in an apples to apples comparisom to iGoogle, which means we've gotten something right.
Today I stumbled on a quite old blog by Jason Calcanis about Generation-P that I think, summarizes almost perfectly my opinion on the topic. Participation, transparency, and freedom are what Jason says the new generation expects.. I think he's absolutely hit the nail on the head. This means that hiding your methods, sources, decision making or even trying to outthink the audiences desires, wants or needs will fail if not done in an open way - or without listening to them, I would argue. Yet so much of what I see in businesses today is a real FEAR of transparancy, REAL transparancy and actual freedom - participation is both encouraged, but heavily moderated, transparancy is managed by the comm's department.. you get my drift (i'm not slagging the BBC, by the way, this is true in ALL major corporations, in fact, by comparisom the BBC is quite open - demonstrated by my very ability to write this in a blog!)
While I completely understand the nature of this fear - the idea that wisdom of crowds + freedom of choice, the delusion of the masses, might unmask some of our less well thought out positions, ideas or reporting.. I suspect it will have the opposite effect.
Given the choice, the transparancy and good information, that can be trusted - learned from and inspired by - I think the BBC could leverage these three ideals to do things that were fundamentally more successful & engaging than ever before. But to do it, we'll need to unlock the doors, open up the system and let people see us naked, dirty and occasionally wrong... We'll also need to ENGAGE with our audience, not fear them, and realize that it might turn out that the audience actually really HATES Top Gear..
Though frankly, I REALLY doubt it.
Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com
