Designing for Competing Business & User Goals

Ziyun Liang at UXDX Community: Revolutionizing Design: From Feedback to Data Insights. Video: https://youtu.be/4pxyseXZnQ0

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

The New York Times and its advertising business

[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name is Ziyun Liang. I'm a lead product designer at the New York Times, and I work on the New York Times advertising experience. I've been at the Times for two and a half years, and in my career I've been working in the digital design space for the last eight years.

[00:00:22] Before we start diving right into the topic, designing for competing goals, I'd love to give you a little bit of background on the Times. The New York Times, or the New-York Daily Times as it was originally called, ran its first printed issue over 174 years ago, in 1851. One of the things I love about the Times as a brand is its innovation on its own terms, from the introduction of color to the front page, to the launch of NYTimes.com on desktop in 1997, to the mobile app. The New York Times today has more than 10 million subscribers across digital and print, making it the world's most subscribed-to digital media organization.

[00:01:17] Beyond the news, the New York Times has expanded into best-in-class offerings across wellness, culture, cooking, sports and games. In the last year, people played New York Times games over two billion times. That's a crazy number, super high engagement. The Times' mission, which I love, is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. This mission is rooted in the belief that great journalism has the power to make each reader's life richer and more fulfilling, and all of society stronger.

[00:02:00] As the Times has evolved beyond just the newspaper, advertising has been a large part of that journey, and today both our subscription and advertising business models work together in harmony and are critical to our success. I focus on the advertising experience here at the Times. By delivering to our subscribers content and experiences that are worth paying for, we also give advertisers compelling, high-quality opportunities to connect with these deeply engaged audiences. But the process of getting there isn't always easy.

How the team is structured and where the tension comes from

[00:02:41] That brings us to today's topic: designing for competing goals. Let's start with some context. First I want to give you a sense of how our team is structured. At the Times, the product design work is made up of many, many cross-functional teams, all pursuing the same high-level goals and objectives. Given the New York Times' broad brand offering, the advertising mission, the mission I'm on, runs horizontally across all of our news and consumer products in our bundle, such as games, cooking and audio. Because of that structure, our experience design team is uniquely positioned to have a view into many of the other teams' initiatives, and oftentimes our team is working with all the teams throughout the year.

[00:03:38] Within the advertising mission, our team works alongside a large number of teams from sales, marketing, data science and research. We are responsible for the advertising experience across the entire digital bundle, and our team supports the ad products and tools, including reporting and measurement, as well as partnering with our ad sales team and marketing team for our clients on new pitches and partnerships. Given the range of work we do, we constantly find ourselves at the center of tension between these groups. Today we're going to talk about a few processes I've found quite effective for how we approach designing while balancing the goals and needs of these groups.

A Times-centric mindset

[00:04:33] First, let's start with our mindset. For many teams, and this may apply to the organization you work at, and it definitely applies within the Times, expanding responsibility beyond the individual level to the team level, thinking as a team about how we can achieve goals, changing that mindset from my work to our work, may already be enough. However, due to the horizontal nature of our team and our responsibility for developing ad products and experiences for the entire New York Times bundle, a team-oriented approach alone is not enough to push the project forward smoothly. This is because team goals can sometimes conflict with one another.

[00:05:26] For example, our team goal is to create premium ad experiences. You may ask, what does premium mean? A premium ad experience should have scale, delivering impactful results for advertisers. It should be differentiated, providing unique, recognizable offerings, so advertisers will come to us to launch their campaigns instead of going to Facebook or Instagram. It should be performant and measurable. And premium ads should be able to scale across the New York Times product landscape: Cooking, Wirecutter, all the products. We strive to build ad products that are respectful of our user experiences, and we prioritize and care a lot about our users' privacy.

[00:06:14] Let's look at one of our partner teams' goals: Cooking. Their goal is to make Cooking the go-to tool for recipe exploration and cooking. Key metrics to measure the success include subscription growth, user engagement and the retention rate. Oftentimes we find that ad scale, one of our premium differentiators, and the user engagement goals on the Cooking side are at odds, because to achieve greater scale and impact, the ad would benefit a lot from larger size, higher placement and increased frequency. However, these qualities may negatively impact user engagement metrics on the Cooking side, such as scroll depth, recipe click rates and bounce rates.

[00:07:11] When this happens, broadening our perspective to a Times-centric view is important. That mission-driven approach is essential, because regardless of team goals and differences, or metrics differences, we all share the desire for the Times to succeed. A Times-centric mindset is this synergistic cycle of growth. As our CEO Meredith Levien put it in words, our investment in our journalism and our products improves the Times on the whole, increasing our appeal and growing our subscriber base. It's a virtuous, beautiful cycle.

[00:07:54] By embracing this Times-centric mindset, the shift started to happen. We began to value and seek to understand partner goals, especially those that are in conflict with ours. These points of divergence are opportunities to differentiate and make the solution more unique and more tailored to the Times. Reaching alignment isn't a binary win or lose; it's not that black and white anymore. I think that's the biggest learning I've had from having that mindset: finding the unique nuances within those gray areas can open the opportunity to find alignment.

[00:08:40] With the Cooking team, the shared goals look like this. You will notice there are a lot of nuances in the placement, for example. Respecting the size of the ad in relationship to the content: we're not fixating on a singular size anymore, but we consider different sizes for different environments, like keeping the ad height similar to recipe cards in Cooking search, for a more seamless flow, so people can scroll past more quickly and not be disrupted by ads. And for reading-heavy sections, maybe larger visual ads can help break that reading fatigue.

[00:09:24] And tailoring the ad experience based on the mode and intent of the user. For example, when users are in deep reading mode, consuming recipe ingredients and steps, no ad will be displayed in between the content to disrupt them. Lastly, for unique opportunities during key moments, a flexible ad slot structure can support bigger-size ads, delivering more scale and visibility for advertisers. That's the first approach: the Times-centric mindset.

Using tenets to guide decisions

[00:10:00] The second approach when facing conflict is to use tenets. A tenet is a principle or belief that helps guide decision making. Today I'd love to share the New York Times product design tenets. First, clarity. Our products help users parse complexity by creating clear distinctions: what's new, what's different, what's worth your time. Design delivers clarity through intuitive information architecture, consistent pathways through our products, typography and design that establish hierarchy, and a judicious aesthetic that we prioritize in favor of straightforward and efficient experiences.

[00:10:51] Second, optimize for time well spent. We guide users' attention to what matters the most. We do this by constructing experiences that aid efficiency or immersiveness, focusing on delivering value, and this is informed by both intuition and data.

[00:11:13] Uncommonly high standards of craft. Products that are distinctively original, refined and beautiful are a delight to use; we truly believe in that. We do this through intentional and consistent use of design systems of typography, color, motion, naming and tone, prioritizing the details that make a product a pleasure to use, and not settling for making a good thing, but making the best thing.

[00:11:46] And we create accessible products, to ensure we reach every curious person who wishes to seek the truth and understand the world. An approachable and inclusive product creates an environment that brings people together.

[00:12:01] And we believe trust here is paramount, above all else. Journalistic excellence and product excellence are so tightly tied together. Great journalism delivered in poor packaging raises doubts, and the best-designed product experience is hollow without content of equally high caliber. The tight integration of form and content creates a product experience that imparts trust. We do this by prototyping extensively to understand the relationship between form and content, and we avoid using deceptive patterns, even if they're the industry norm. These are the New York Times tenets I often refer back to whenever I'm trying to make a decision or prioritize certain experiences with my partner teams.

Visual collaboration and making the invisible visible

[00:13:00] The last approach I want to share today is visual collaboration. As designers, we often ask ourselves what unique contributions we can bring to the table to align teams and visions and propel the project forward. I'd love to share two thoughts today. First is the ability to bring the idea to life by creating tangible visual artifacts that help to bridge the gap between abstract visions and concrete reality. Second is identifying patterns, connecting seemingly disconnected dots and making the invisible visible.

[00:13:39] Visual artifacts harness the power of the picture superiority effect. You've probably all heard versions of this. It basically means if a piece of information is delivered in text, you remember 10% after 72 hours. If you add a picture, though, the recall goes up to 65%. This ability to enhance memory and communication makes visualization a powerful tool for sharing ideas, because even to get to the stage of having people disagree on an idea, you need to first share the idea effectively.

[00:14:17] As designers, we have many visualization practices, such as creating personas and case studies, that help us transform complex ideas and experiences into easily digestible visual artifacts, making the vision become more real. When teams disagree with one another, these visual artifacts serve as neutral ground for everyone to quickly react to, because they're just super approachable. Anyone can read a picture, and we're not creating complex code.

[00:14:51] As for making the invisible visible, my team possesses this advantage that we work with so many different teams, and this provides us with a wealth of insights and knowledge, enabling us to be more likely to see the hidden patterns and new solutions that may not be evident to others.

Example: monetizing Cooking search with sponsored tags

[00:15:12] I want to use a real example to illustrate this idea. Let's revisit New York Times Cooking. When strategizing thoughtful monetization options, high-engagement surfaces are often the initial starting point. There are many surfaces that people love to engage with on Cooking that we have effectively monetized, such as the recipe detail page or the collection page. However, the search environment remained untapped.

[00:15:41] When this initiative to monetize search started, there was tension between the ad and Cooking product teams. The ad product team wanted to use existing ad formats and patterns, to seek efficient monetization at scale. One possible solution, as you can see in the visual, was to add an ad slot and build an ad series [?] for the search landing page. However, the Cooking product team disagreed, arguing that this approach wouldn't provide any value to users, and ads would crowd the space and confuse users about what to do. Our team was tasked to find a new solution to address Cooking's UX concerns and ultimately to facilitate alignment among stakeholders.

[00:16:36] First, we actively listened to concerns and points of disagreement with an open mindset, as raised by the immediate stakeholders. We also sought insights from other teams beyond the team directly involved in the project, such as sales and marketing, because in order to build an experience you need to be able to sell it. This broader insight revealed several patterns, such as the importance of achieving scale while respecting user experience, and the desire to create something new, an integrated ad experience, not using the old ad format, while leveraging maybe some existing ad patterns, maybe an ad series [?] we can reuse.

[00:17:24] With all that in mind, our design team proposed a sponsored tag solution, balancing user experience and value with advertising value. The experience works like this. An advertiser can sponsor a recipe collection tag, and this tag will appear in the Cooking search environment. One of the visuals can be shown as the blue tag you see here. The user taps on this sponsored tag and sees a dedicated sponsored results page, as you can see in the middle screen, with a high advertiser presence. This page also leverages the already established ad series [?].

[00:18:12] After selecting a recipe, another visual representation of the sponsorship is an interactive recipe recommendation card, which you will see in the next screen, allowing the user to discover more content. This new format, recipe recommendation cards, could be shared across the New York Times bundle, amplifying the sponsorship's reach and impact. This solution illustrates the advertiser and user search journey visually, and it really helped both the ad team and Cooking to believe there is a possibility to find solutions that can benefit advertisers and bring value to users and our business too.

[00:18:57] To recap what I shared today, here are the three things to consider when designing for competing goals. First, see problems and solutions more holistically, from an institutional level. Leverage tenets or principles to ground different views. And use visual collaboration to turn problems into tangible visual artifacts; that will bring clarity and open possibility, really letting the team see the possibility to move forward. That's all I have to share today, and hopefully I have some time to answer some questions.

Q&A

[00:19:44] Katherine: Oh, I think you're unmuted, or it's me. I'll eventually learn: repeat and learn. That was really great, Ziyun, thank you so much for that. There are questions here, so I will dive straight in. The first one was asking you, what is the hardest part of building for a brand like the New York Times? Based on this, I think it's around speed of delivery versus quality. It's not a zero failure rate, but a lot of companies would have a higher acceptance rate of failure and mistakes than maybe the New York Times. How do you manage that as an individual and as a team?

[00:20:40] Ziyun: First of all, what's the hardest to build and to work on at the New York Times? From my personal experience, it took me a while to learn the brand legacy and the history and the vision, the true culture here, in order to solve problems and find solutions more efficiently. For example, it took me a while to understand, okay, there is some tech debt, and we cannot use a new design to quickly resolve it; we have to build on existing technology. That will take people a while, because you have to work on projects in order to discover those constraints. It's really that adapting phase.

[00:21:20] Luckily the New York Times product organization has amazing leaders with big ambitions, trying to achieve that digital excellence. I've often heard that when working for legacy companies, maybe innovation is lacking, but here at the Times people are always pushing for more innovative products, because there's a culture to support that.

[00:21:49] As for delivery and quality, I don't think we will ever sacrifice quality. At minimum we always want to ship a high-quality and lovable MVP, with clear metrics to define success or failure. However, to deliver that product, the process can have many quick iterations using different practices, like user testing, internal interviews, showing stakeholders and gathering insights, so that every round we can show a different group of people, the people you think are best for your current design. User research, qualitative or quantitative, to show people our design and get feedback. I think we'll never sacrifice quality, and there are many different ways to quickly test if the idea is good or bad and move on.

[00:22:55] Katherine: Amazing. And what is your team structure like?

[00:23:00] Ziyun: We are the ad product design team. We're super small, three designers, and we work on all ad products, and we're under the ad mission. I think I have that slide in there; I can go back. But if I can clarify, Katherine, what structure do you mean? How we work with people?

[00:23:25] Katherine: I don't have an addition to that, but if I was answering that question, or thinking through that question, it might be not only your design team but maybe the wider team. You have a team of three; who else is in your wider team?

[00:23:43] Ziyun: Yes, absolutely. We have PMs, and PMs sponsor different areas. One PM will sponsor the core news ad experience, another PM is responsible for Cooking and Wirecutter. We have PMs, we have developers, and we can always reach out to researchers if we need extra resources. There's a very fun Slack group we can tap into for UX copy resources. And we have leadership, from user experience to storytelling. Like I said, in publishing we have a venue to gather feedback. We're small, but we can always reach out to so many different, diverse teams. Oh yes, we have data scientists on our team, in our mission, too, because in order to have key success metrics, data scientists always provide that insight: whether 10% means success or a 5% drop in engagement means failure. They will need to parse through that data.

[00:25:00] Katherine: Amazing. And a question that I'll ask is, what tools do you use in your role day to day?

[00:25:06] Ziyun: I use Figma. We all use Figma; we love Figma. Occasionally, if I do mockups, I will use Photoshop to photoshop things out. I even use After Effects, which will expose how old I am, but sometimes if I cannot use Figma to create a super sophisticated, detailed animation, I will use After Effects. But Figma is the day-to-day, everyday tool. And surprisingly, we use Google Slides a lot to put together presentations, because we're thinking about stakeholders. When you need to present to stakeholders beyond your function, they may be business stakeholders, they may be strategy stakeholders; they're not designers, and there's always a problem with them accessing your file. Google Slides, we've found internally, is the most versatile tool, and we use it a lot.

[00:26:12] Katherine: Lovely, really great, and a really great talk. Thank you so much, I really enjoyed it.

[00:26:17] Ziyun: Thank you for inviting me, it's such a pleasure.

[00:26:20] Katherine: Thank you. Your talk will be available later this week for those who want to rewatch or forward it to a colleague, so we look forward to rewatching that. Thank you again, enjoy the rest of your day, and we'll see you next time.

[00:26:33] Ziyun: Thank you. All right, bye.