Link is a mobile app for financial reporters and public relations (PR) professionals in news industry to exchange information of press conferences. It provides a new channel for their interaction besides phone, e-mail, and fax, and it changes the traditional one-on-one contact mode between the two parties. Link enhances matching of reporting needs, and it promotes communication, which is essential to both investment decisions and health of a financial market. I initiated this individual project and delivered final design in eight weeks.
As a financial reporter, I exchange my business card with other reporters and PR professionals everyday. As the main way to convey contact information, the card is simple and effective. However, I notice that some PR professionals frequently write down a reporter's specialty on his or her business cards. I realize that they may need to know more about a new reporter than just phone numbers, e-mails, and address on the name cards.
In addition, I hear talks as below from time to time. PR professionals often have trouble to get more available reporters to attend their activities, whilst a reporter, due to lack of information, may just miss an activity that he or she would have liked to attend. I therefore try to figure out deficiencies of current information exchange system between these two parts to see what can be done to improve it.
We are going to hold a press conference to release our new report “Rise of RMB and its Future ”, but I can’t get many available reporters to attend it. --- PR of Melon Investment
I want to do a report about internationalization of RMB, and I want to attend related conferences of the topic. Where can I get conference information? --- Reporter of Financial Post
Generally, an activity is initiated by a PR agency or an in-house PR department.
If a PR professional wants to invite reporters to attend activities, he or she needs to contact reporters one by one through traditional ways like phone, e-mail, or fax. If the reporter is not available at the time, and the PR does not have contact information of other reporters, then the reporting need cannot be matched.
Likewise, if a reporter wants to know if there are activities that he or she would like to attend, the reporter needs to search for it by contacting PR professionals one by one. If the reporter does not have the PR’s contact information, or, the reporter does not reach the PR due to the large amount of them, then the reporting need cannot be matched too.
In addition, PR professionals have little information about a reporter's reporting focus or their recent reporting projects, since searching information from piles of newspapers can be tedious work.
This can influence reporting quality too. PR professionals may invite reporters, who are not quite familiar with the conference topic, to attend activities. Similarly, reporters may find it hard to reach people who can talk about the topic that they are working on, whilst a PR professional may happen to need a reporter to do such reporting. Therefore, if a PR can get access to information of a reporter’s recent projects, market information can be better conveyed.
The first opportunity is to add a QR code on business card to include more information. By scanning the code, a PR professional can check a reporter's schedule and his or her recent reporting focus online.
This solution could save a PR professional's time of calling or sending e-mails individually to invite reporters, but they still need to get the name card first. In addition, redesign cost is high if we want to include all reporters from different media.
With this new channel, all information that the two parties need and want to convey can be shared on a platform. In this way, the one-on-one mode can be changed, voice of companies and investors can be better heard, and market information can be better communicated.
By analyzing work flow of reporters and PR professionals, I made information architecture for interface design.
I named the platform “Link”, which emphasizes its role in connecting participants of a market. I made two interfaces for reporters and PR professionals separately, since they have different needs on some reporting steps.
In user experience design, the importance of usability equals to beauty, but the design of usability precedes beauty. Therefore, information architecture should precede and guide wireframe, prototype, and user interface design. Also, information architecture is critical for a positive user experience, because if a user cannot find the content or function they want, they would not be delighted. Therefore, information architecture should be user-centered rather than technical-centered. It derives from scenarios, personas, usability testing, and other UX process.