Creating better media publishing experiences for journalists

The Digital Content Studio product team was assembled in 2009 at CBC to develop the foundations for a large-scale digital News and Audio / Video redesign initiative. The team’s initial project, labelled Media Gateway, was launched in an effort to deliver a solution for show producers to efficiently cut and publish video and audio clips, in a way that would seamlessly integrate with the company’s proprietary CMS.

I was the lone IA / UX resource assigned to the project, and worked primarily with a team of 4 developers and one project manager, although task analysis involved interaction with producers throughout the organization, both in Toronto (on-site) and across Canada (via web / video conference).

PROCESS

• Contextual enquiry
• Task analysis
• Wireframes / wireflows
• Content Taxonomy
• Prototyping
• Usability testing
• Development

Outcome

The development team did end up using the wireframes to create a working prototype of the media uploader and thumbnail cropping tool, however the project was cut short. A shift in management half-way through the project led to a decision to upgrade the entire CMS and partner with a new video technology vendor. The work of reviewing the journalists' pain pain points, however, was useful in validating the features required of the new system. The team later worked together to develop standard Radio and TV show templates to improve efficiency and brand consistency.