Improving the digital reading experience Graduation project at DPG/de Volkskrant
Background In the past ten to fifteen years newspapers have moved from print to online, with the latter becoming an increasingly important channel for readers. Through this process Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant (part of the DPG media group) has already learned a lot with regard to digital news, but the newspaper sees the current state as ‘just the beginning’. The newspapers’ journalists, designers, analysts and software developers are continually trying to improve its digital reading experience. For its newspapers DPG does not focus on one-time peak visitor-numbers but aims for readers that return to its digital channels often, because they have a relation with that particular media outlet. The question is how the digital reading experience of de Volkskrant, and especially of the app and website, can contribute to this.
Assignment Perform user/contextual research among the different readers of de Volkskrant to identify current usage problems of the newspaper’s digital outlets, and to identify patterns of use that provide opportunities. The research should include different user groups and/or different reading moments (morning, evening, weekend) and look at how the current site and app are experienced and what possible improvements there are. During this analysis an open, broad approach to identifying usage problems is desired, but it is also an opportunity to verify some issues that are currently being discussed within DPG (e.g., how to deal with breaking news, how to best publish columns, should you let users track authors and subjects and how?). Based on the user/contextual research develop a design proposal or proposals and evaluate this with participants and stakeholders.
Organization The project will be for both DPG digital and for de Volkskrant. DPG is the parent company of many well-known online and print media, but also of a radio station. Some of the titles of DPG are de Volkskrant, AD, Trouw, Het Parool, Nu.nl, Libelle, many local newspapers and the radio station Q- music. De Volkskrant is the biggest quality newspaper of The Netherlands, both in print and online. The newspaper wants to raise the level of the debate in The Netherlands with quality journalism and enrich the lives of as many people as possible with news, analyses, interviews, background stories, op-eds and human interest.
Working remotely Due to corona, currently DPG digital is working completely remote/online and the editorial staff of de Volkskrant works mostly remote/online, but there is a ‘skeleton crew’ present in the office. During the graduation project the contact with supervisors, staff, but also with readers/participants is expected to be mostly digital, but at times other ‘corona-proof’ ways may be explored.
Candidate profile The assignment is open to a student that is a ‘pragmatic idealist’ with regard to user-centred design, that is passionate about developing solutions that work for users in the real world, but that are also realistic enough to get implemented.
Language At DPG-digital communication is mostly in English but at de Volkskrant staff mainly communicates in Dutch (though most do speak/write English). The newspaper is completely in Dutch, and when conducting user research, participants may have trouble expressing themselves in English. This means that if you do not speak Dutch this may be quite a challenging assignment and it thus may be the case that it will cost you some extra time/effort. Both the DPG/de Volkskrant and I think that it is recommendable if the graduation student speaks Dutch but are willing to discuss the options with students who do not.
Project start September 2020
Contact Jasper van Kuijk, assistant professor of user-centred innovation [email protected] / +31 15 278 1378