Entertainment and leisure

Free newspaper Metro wanted to make sure its new video and music sharing services would be a hit with young urbanites.

Through MEview and MEmusic the newspaper’s 2.6 million readers can now upload their own videos and music onto the Metro website. Readers can also watch videos from the site using their mobile phones. 

Metro wanted our help refining both services before launch. We evaluated both services at beta stage. And with some tweaking they’ve proved a hit with readers.

We recruited 10 Metro readers who were already downloading and uploading music and videos from the net. At our offices, we briefed the participants to register for MEview and MEmusic and to use them for 5 days, Participants downloaded and uploaded songs and videos and wrote a daily diary and posted it to a dedicated website. During the trial we contacted participants daily to head off any issues that might affect data quality.

After the trial, participants returned for one-on-one interviews. We asked them to walk back through how they had used the Metro services on web and mobile.

We based the interviews around their real-world experiences of both services and to clarify issues they had raised. We explored ways to improve the services and spotted issues and misconceptions that might prevent Metro’s readers using the new services.

 We collected detailed user feedback in 3 stages:

• Initial briefing ensured participants were engaged in the study; they even commented on each other’s video uploads during the trial.
• Trial and self reporting ensured findings were grounded in real-world experiences
• Follow-up interview to explore reported issues.

"This user experience research proved vital for successfully launching our new services. new experience found many details to improve but most importantly they alerted us to misconceptions that could have impinged on the business model. This is new territory for Metro and new experience’s expertise was key."
Katharine King, Research Director, Metro (Associated Newspapers)