The launch event of the Innovation Forum London was themed ‘Who wants tomorrow’s papers?’. It addressed the synergy between online and offline newspapers and asked the question what we can¬† learn from best practice in research, design, technology, journalism, editorial and business strategy.
Khoi Vinh on the New York Times described how there has been a significant change in the way the online news is perceived within the company. It is not longer considered to be just on online version of the hard copy newspaper that gives the news away for free. The website has so much more functionality. It caters to the conversational character of the news experience of today. He did agree though that they should probably do more contextual inquiry into the news experience. The current user testing is in reality more ‘executive testing’, aiming to please the management. The other panelists were: Victor Keegan (the Guardian), Tom Savigar (Future Laboratory), Paul Adams (Flow Interactive) and Mike Altendorf (Conchango).