Experience Design, Alive!
Medium is looking into new ways to generate revenue without using traditional advertising.
Timeline: 2 weeks
Role: User Interview and research, Affinity mapping, User journey mapping, Building archetypes and persona, Ideation and prototyping.
Team:
Amanda Chan
Dean Berlingeri
Mehmet Alkan
Background
Medium is a place (online) to read, write, and interact with the stories that matter most.
They aim to be the best place to share great content. “What we want to do is create the best possible place to support great content. How does the best media in the world work? In almost every case, the best media is supported by those who consume it.”
One of many new initiatives/features that we think are relevant to what we are trying to do:
Medium stopped traditional advertising earlier this year.
Medium has membership structure - Freemium. $5/month.
Medium introduced ‘clap’ function as metrics and help the stories that matter most rise to the top.
They are also expanding partner program - where an individual writer will get rewarded and paid. One way to measure it is by how many 'claps' the article gained.
First round of Interview
About 40% of people we interviewed read and also write at Medium but none of them is a paying member. Reasons are as follows: They are not aware of it or they don’t see it valuable enough. We identified that people are willing to pay for information if they can’t get it (scarcity) or if it is too tedious.
“I used to read medium all the time when it first came out, but now it is kind of boring”
Insights:
People don’t mind advertising if it is targeted and serve the purpose or relates to what they are looking for.
People are looking to learn and search for knowledge insights but they won’t pay for content online unless if it is subject matter experts, exclusive content or a niche industry.
“If I can’t get the information elsewhere, then I’ll pay”
This brings us to returned the brief with focusing question
Focusing question
How do we add value to medium so people are willing to pay for it?
Second round interview
Collectively, we did additional 8 interviews. It was more targeted and were trying to dig deep into what do people do to self-learnt.
“Going to events to furthers my career”
Extracting the insights of this round, I learnt on what do people think of events. And what type of people might like going to events to learn, network, or self-improvement.
What makes a good event are:
Recommended by trusted people in the industry.
Have a follow up from organiser after the events
Have good speakers - experts
Have in-depth content
And not so good events:
Talking time too short or too long
Content is too general
Persona
From collective data, we started building a persona. This is Alex. She is a creative soul. Lives in Northcote. Keen to learn, she struggles to prove herself in the industry causing self-doubt. She is a self-driven learner, environmentally conscious and aspires to be a valuable member of the industry.
Competitive Analysis
This is a summary of some of the other platforms we compared to Medium in line with Alex’s needs. She is looking for a platform that will enhance professional and personal knowledge. She has a goal of learning, improving, contributing, and gaining recognition in her industry.
To inline our solution with our focusing questions, we look at into a more rigorous brand recognition activities that expand to face-to-face experiences. Inspired by Red Bull positioning, we would like to propose Medium to give their members and readers/writers different experiences.
Framing Statement
Creating immersive on-site learning experience to generate desirable content for the existing website.
Current learning journey for user
This represents Alex’s learning journey currently. She reads and contributes her thoughts and knowledge back to the community. What is next from here?
Future learning journey for user
To create face-to-face learning experiences. We intend to bring on-site experiences to the learning journey.
Bringing a real-world experience is no easy task to do. Looking back at the research, many values good speakers and speak highly on events where they get to learn from speakers, learning from workshops and network at the same time.
Ideation
The on-site learning experience we propose is an event. Event with high profile guest speakers from various industries not just talking but could be having an improve debate, FAQ panels, a gig (it has to be fun too) and a bit of food and drinks. Medium: Alive
Ideal learning journey
The learning journey doesn't stop at the event. Alex can extend the learning experience by going to workshops and network.
The strategy lies that people who are going to the events - listen to the speakers would write about it because they learn from it. They can also write about the workshop and their contribution and insights from meetups generating valuable content to the online Medium. The more a user write about a particular industry or interest, the more quality content generated, and the user can become an expert giving back to Medium community.
The journey can work both ways and it doesn’t have an end, generating circle of quality content.
To ensure this event creates demand to Medium’s Membership, we decided upon a few options:
We were also thinking about Alex. This current pricing structure is beneficial for Alex at this stage in her life.But also adding value to Medium - as we are hoping people would go to annual membership.
Wireframe
There were options on how Medium could advertise the events. By putting posters up - mimicking a band gig or events - aiming for that coolness and energetic mindset and for the general public or by putting the invitation online for their current readers and writer. Here is a simple wireframe on how the online invitation could look like.
Test
We put out posters as the first prototype. It functioned as a ‘teaser’ to test if it will create engagement and talking points.
Had some insights and learn a bit more:
Poster needs more information. Some user where unclear who Ev Williams is.
They like the idea but would not make decision-based on the poster alone.
It is enough to make people go to medium website to check, wanting to find out more.
Next Steps
More quantitative and qualitative testing and in-depth.
Online campaign to test interest.
Looking into Medium and interview staff and management to gauge direction.
Limitations & Iterations
Little access to information.
Community interest - Medium user is currently limited.
It has been an insightful experience to work on this project and designing experience for Medium, there are plenty more to be done in this case, Ideally, working in partnership with PR, Marketing Strategist and other stakeholders would make this visible.