The problem

Working for the largest media company in Canada, the COVID-19 pandemic had had a profound impact on our work. In March 2020 we were in the middle of getting ready for the Tokyo Olympics when all work had to pause and shift to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. The responsibilities of a public broadcaster are varied, from entertainment, to sports, to news. This means we have to be ready to pivot and adapt quickly. I was on a 3 day ski vacation when I was contacted by panicked stakeholders needing to know what our audience needs from us during such a crazy time. Despite conducting prior research on breaking news, we weren’t sure how our audience would navigate an event of this magnitude.

What we did

We knew we had to get in touch with our users ASAP. We also knew this was going to be a rapidly evolving and changing situation. So, in order to understand how Canadians were following the COVID-19 pandemic & how this may change and evolve, we decided to run a week long diary study. Respondents answered the same questions every day for 7 days. To inform our news teams content strategy, we wanted to know what types of COVID-19 information people were looking for. To inform our product teams experience plans, we wanted to know how users were following the pandemic (i.e. what mediums, formats and platforms they were turning to). We had 118 participants from across the country complete all 7 days of the study. We learned about general behavioural trends, such as shifting/ evolving needs and information overload/ news fatigue, as well as top content needs, such as a desire for government updates, case numbers, and local news. These learnings helped us identify top product opportunities, such as surfacing local COVID-19 content, and better organizing/categorizing COVID-19 content.

This ultimately led to a few new product features, including a landing page organized based on user needs, and a COVID-19 specific navigation bar accessible across the entire website. These helped solve two fundamental user problems identified: helping users quickly access COVID-19 news & helping them find the specific COVID-19 topic they were looking for.

My role

Because we had to move quickly on this, results had to be shared ASAP. As the only researcher working on this project, along with designing and launching the study, every day I analyzed the diary study responses that came in to be able to share them that same day. This allowed us to actively monitor the situation and adapt accordingly. Once it became apparent the pandemic wasn’t going away any time soon, we wrapped up the daily analysis and updates, and I analyzed and shared the week-long data.

Example Artifact: Primary data

Because this situation was evolving so quickly and there was a need for data to be shared asap, there was little time to make flashy artifacts. This meant I was often sharing primary data in as clear and concise of a way as possible.