How Star Wars Inspires NPR’s Digital Strategy

Can Holograms Serve The Public Radio Audience?

R2D2 projecting Ari Shapiro onto a bedside table. (Illustration: Scott Stroud/NPR; Original photo: Stephen Voss/NPR.)

If you watched the original 1977 Star Wars film (where R2-D2 projects a distant Princess Leia into a room), you might imagine some future Monday morning when David Greene, Rachel Martin, and your local station’s radio host appear as 3-D projections, hovering above the nightstand as your eyes open.

Companies are actively developing technology to equip your mobile phone and other displays with R2-D2’s projection skills. The possibility of a holographic Morning Edition is close.

Part of my job is to imagine future concepts for how public radio may fit into your life. I also consider the likelihood you will adopt (and frequently use) any new thing we choose to design and build.

I doubt I will design a holographic interface next year — or 5 years from now; however, I also never imagined NPR would transport us to a National Park in virtual reality.

Paper Prototype of holographic Morning Edition featuring David Greene, Rachel Martin and WAMU’s Matt McCleskey. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we aren’t building this product — at least not anytime soon. (Original photos: Stephen Voss/NPR and WAMU.org.)

Imagining a possible future too early isn’t without benefits, however; occasionally it leads us beyond “improbable, but possible” to the realm of “slightly odd and deliberately unbounded”.

Ready for some design science fiction? Here we go.

Since 2006, I have interviewed many folks who:

• Fell out of the habit of listening to public radio compared with another time in their lives. They often want public radio, but perhaps they no longer drive to work— or they retired the bedside clock radio years ago.
• Listen regularly, but aren’t aware of new methods that may better match their smartphone behaviors/adoption of wearables/use of digital assistants/enjoyment of Smart TVs and entertainment platforms.
• Don’t believe public radio is for them and have never made it part of any routine.

I often wonder what would happen if we could coach every member of the public on their listening, reading and watching options — in person. What would happen if we clearly told each user which methods for experiencing public radio are best suited to his or her specific needs?

When I interview folks at the start of our product usability tests, I always begin with the question, “How does public radio fit into your life — if at all?”. At the end of these sessions (after watching them use prototypes of upcoming products or new features), I occasionally break protocol and recommend other habits.

The answer to the first question helps me understand any current behaviors and mental models so I can give new information about relevant apps, podcasts or social media options.

I wish I could hold this style of tailored conversation with every current and target audience member. I love talking with folks and listening, but I cannot realistically have a thoughtful, private chat with over 300 million people.

Still, I wonder:

Could simply preparing for a one-on-one talk with every potential user help me understand when and why our current products confuse, fall short or fail to break through in the first place?

Imagine an NPR personality as your dedicated public radio coach

Let’s say we assign your most trusted public radio voice to materialize at varying times during your day for one week — perhaps as a hologram or as a voice assistant. She will appear when you summon her (and surprise you exactly when you may need her advice but didn’t think to ask).

This person’s job is to demonstrate the many ways to listen, read and watch public radio content. She may ask questions to learn more about your preferences, abilities and routine. If you already have a daily habit around public media consumption, the coach may suggest new or alternative ways to become more informed (or entertained/relaxed/inspired).

What advice would a coach give you?

Imagine you’re newly awake on a Monday morning at your home in Washington, DC. Let’s also assume WAMU 88.5 FM is your favorite local station. Lakshmi Singh appears as a hologram to learn more about you and share advice about your available options.

Twenty-five years ago, most public radio listeners may have kept a clock radio on their nightstand. Now NPR has mobile and watch apps, the npr.org website, live station streaming on many devices, podcasts, Facebook live videos, and more. Local stations produce their own apps, websites and digital services to serve a common audience. Third parties use our APIs to create even more digital options.

We should provide a briefing book for Lakshmi to review before she speaks. (This is a reference packet like ones we might provide to hosts as they prepare for a radio interview or live coverage of an event. It’s a backgrounder for an upcoming live conversation — with some suggestions for language and a few necessary dialogue scripts.)

At least two things are important to consider before we write Lakshmi’s briefing book. We must start with:

1. An understanding of common mental models we’ve observed during past user research. We must first understand how our current audience experiences public radio as part of a morning routine or why they do not.
2. A clear point of view on what NPR and our local member stations want users to do (in service of creating a more informed public and driving community connectedness).

What would the briefing book for a typical weekday morning look like?

Here’s a draft I wrote for this experiment:

(When I started the list, I had no idea how long it would become. Feel free to skip beyond the bullets once you grasp the general idea and/or start to fall asleep. Lakshmi also wouldn’t actually read all of this; it’s source material for what she might say in conversation once she understands more about what the user needs.)

Wake Up!

• Good morning. It’s 6:30 AM. No need to jump out of bed if you’re not ready.

How To Listen To Live Radio

• Want to catch up on the news by listening to the radio? You don’t have a radio on your nightstand. If you find one, tune in to your local station in Washington, DC — WAMU 88.5 FM. You’ll hear local, national and international news.
• Morning Edition, NPR’s morning news program starts at 6AM, so you’ll likely join a story in progress. You’ll also hear the national and local newscasts at the top of the next hour.
• If you move to the kitchen to make coffee or breakfast, you may want to have a radio there, too. When important breaking news happens, you’ll likely hear a report as the story develops.
• No radio? You can stream live radio from WAMU from your phone. You have a few options. You could open your mobile browser and go to your station’s website to play the live stream. It’s pretty annoying to type in a web address in a mobile browser. It’s also easier to control audio in an app, so you should listen live on the NPR News app.
• Some TV entertainment consoles or gaming devices may support live streams, but this isn’t as common.
• If you have an Amazon Echo, you can say, “Alexa, play NPR” and your local station will start playing via a third-party service.

How To Listen On Demand

• You can also listen with the NPR One app in the morning. It’s like listening to Morning Edition, but it’s on demand, and the app learns your listening preferences over time. We connect you with a nearby station, and you can change this station at any time. The app will play the national and local newscasts first, then a selection of deep news analysis and other stories hand-picked for you. You can also skip any story you already heard on live radio or don’t want to hear because it doesn’t interest you. NPR One includes local stories from your favorite station. If you can’t use the app until later in the morning (after Morning Edition is off your local station), you can still listen to the latest news with NPR One. If there is any breaking news, you’ll likely hear it, though not as soon as you would hear breaking news on live radio. If you’re in the middle of a long piece, a breaking newscast or news story would likely come soon after you finish whatever you’re currently playing. NPR One is also available on Apple Watch and Android Wear as well as in your web browser at one.npr.org. You may also hear NPR One on more of your entertainment platforms for your TV and car (via Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, FireTV and Xbox).
• Are you near a computer in the morning? You can open the npr.org website to skim the archival edition of today’s Morning Edition. If you’re on desktop, you may listen to the entire show. Each segment can be added to a queue, so you can skip segments or play segments out of sequence. You may also play individual segments on demand or add segments to a queue. You can also click through to the story for each segment. Some stories include more to see, read or watch beyond what you can hear. Transcripts are also available for most segments, but only after a short delay from when the stories were on air. Unfortunately, we don’t yet display local audio segments on the npr.org web site (unless they were national stories relevant to folks across the country). The show segment list is also available on npr.org via your tablet and smartphone, but you can only play each segment one-by-one. There is no queue to allow you to play the whole show. If you want to browse past days’ rundowns, you can also do this on the npr.org website.
• Another way to listen to all segments of Morning Edition on your smartphone is to listen via the NPR News App. You can play all segments from today via a queue, play individual segments or add your own selection of segments to a queue. You won’t find local stories here, however.
• Listening to Morning Edition via the program page on npr.org or via the program section of the news app has one big drawback. You should think of it as an historical archive that may be out-of-date as soon as it is published. There is no guarantee the stories are accurate past a certain time, and there are no local station stories listed there. You’re better served listening to a live radio station or stream (if Morning Edition is still on air) or on demand in NPR One. With the NPR One app, someone at NPR is hand-curating the best stories for right now AND stations are providing local stories mixed into your flow. If you’re looking for something you heard on Morning Edition and want to listen to again (or read what’s on the story page), the rundown may work for you, but you could also just search for the story using terms you remember.
• Some station web sites allow you to listen to archival audio for Morning Edition. You can listen to national and local Morning Edition segments on the WAMU.org site either individually or via a playlist. If you want to see what you may have missed on past weekdays, you can also keep loading “more stories” at the bottom of the page to go back in time a few segments at a time.
• If you prefer listening to music in the morning (or want mostly quiet), you can still catch up on news with the NPR newscast on demand. You can listen to the newscast on npr.org, on most station sites (including WAMU), via the NPR News app and in NPR One. The NPR Newscast is also available as a podcast, but it’s called “Hourly News Summary”. You may listen via your favorite podcast player either on your computer, tablet or your smartphone. Some stations have a podcast version of their newscast, though station newscasts are not always hourly.

How To Skim The News (Without Necessarily Listening)

• Do you pick up your phone and skim through your Facebook or Twitter feed in the morning? Or do the same on your tablet or computer? If you follow NPR on Facebook and/or Twitter you will likely see Morning Edition stories in your feed. If you follow/like the Morning Edition social media account, you’ll see mostly audio stories from the show (but occasionally other news to read, too).
• You may also see alerts for Facebook Live videos in the mornings. You can watch the newscast recorded live, followed by a few minutes where the newscast host (Korva Coleman, for example) provides some context and perspective. Later in the morning, you may also see Facebook Live videos where a member of our news staff may interview a reporter about an in-depth news analysis story we’ve aired on Morning Edition or a story we anticipate becoming important later in the day because of expected, scheduled events.
• If you follow your local station on social media, you’ll likely see local stories in your feed in the morning, some with audio.
• If you prefer morning news via email, you can subscribe to the “News Update” email from NPR. This daily email is sent around 11am, so this email newsletter won’t help you early in the morning when you first might skim the inbox on your phone, tablet or computer. Stations often have email newsletters, too, but those emails are sometimes weekly summaries, not morning news digests.
• If you’re more of a reader than a listener, you can also go to the npr.org home page or your station’s website and view the latest news stories. For more news you can navigate to the “News” topic page, too. Some stories will not have audio and therefore may not have aired on Morning Edition, but you’ll likely see the latest news as reported by our news division. At a certain point in your scroll, you’ll notice the news stories are increasingly older and perhaps familiar to you from the past few days. View these stories as a historical archive rather than current news.

Whoa. It all sounds overwhelming, and I didn’t include options for folks who would rather hear entertainment podcasts, storytelling or music when they wake.

Remember — I wrote this briefing book to support a science fiction premise. It isn’t necessary to understand every option to benefit from one or more independently-discovered methods. NPR can’t engage personally with every member of the public, and we’d never say all of this to someone even if we could.

What, then, is the point of this exercise?

The briefing book is an empathetic view of our current offerings. I want to find the right balance of simple, robust, discoverable and relevant in the future.

Where does the coaching sound confusing or forced?

Writing preparatory materials allowed me to enumerate the many appropriate and available ways to listen, read or watch throughout a user’s daily journey from morning to night.

When I read the briefing book, I notice many bullets where the explanation of options sounds confusing or unnecessarily inconsistent.

A frank review of what we offer (and how we’d explain it all) can help us learn where:

• we have more opportunities to provide local news and information
• we should give clear choices for both live and on demand audio, and allow you to switch between the options at will.
• we should help you move from one context to the other, from home to car, from car to workplace and back home.
• we should learn more about you and adapt to your needs over time.
• we should first understand your accessibility needs, then recommend and support assistive technologies.

How would we write a briefing book for the products and features we’ll offer six months from now? One year? Two years? Five years and beyond?

If we could imagine how we might coach folks in the future, would this help us plan our immediate and long-term product roadmap?

We can’t possibly anticipate all future technologies or the priorities of public media beyond reasonable forecasts, but we should try to articulate simple, speculative instructions.

Preparing for Conversational UX

I would never say that our future products should require coaching. I’m absolutely not suggesting NPR should resurrect Microsoft Clippy for public radio. I‘m also convinced most users skip on-boarding sequences when apps provide a skip-button escape hatch.

The spirit and substance of the briefing scripts should materialize via our visual and interaction designs. The products should coach without necessarily explaining. We want effective UI triggers and clear paths to continuous discovery, recurring donation and daily behaviors; however, the coaching scripts aren’t purely hypothetical.

The voice we cultivate while writing a hypothetical briefing book may also translate directly to words or tone we use in voice products like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, OK Google, or custom conversational UX we may build into our future products.

Ideas for user research

What might stick after a week of coaching? Did we effectively trigger actions every morning once users have a baseline of motivation and product knowledge?

If we held real conversations that start with this script, how would we revise the briefing books — and eventually revise our products?

We might conduct a diary study where we first coach users on recommended morning news options (using a script like the one above). For the following week or month, we can then ask which methods stuck, if any. We may also learn about the quality of any new daily behaviors. We can measure if each user is more well-informed.

Here are the larger questions I’m hoping this work will answer:

• Why do some folks in the public have no idea what we have to offer? Or an inaccurate perception?
• How do we reach a bigger and more diverse audience?
• How do we increase the probability that each member of the public is well-informed?
• How do we connect the public radio audience with their local stations and communities?
• How might we encourage the audience to support the financial health of public radio?
• How might the design of our products (and our presence on the platforms people naturally use) make explicit coaching mostly unnecessary?
• How might new conversational UX platforms support some coaching using approachable language?
• How might our products demonstrate the same empathy, ethical integrity and thoroughness as our journalists?
• Should we understand if someone is in the mood for news? How do we strike a balance between informing and emotionally affecting?
• How might our designs not only help you tune in, but also respect your time and lead you to the ideal news and stories for the rare moments of attention you have to spare?

Inspired by the Star Wars scene I’ve held in memory for most of my life, I’m hoping this exercise improves my design work and multiplies our impact.

Don’t worry, Obi-Wan. I started on the far planet of an implausible idea, but my mission has not failed. Hope is abundant.

*Special thanks to NPR Digital Media leadership for setting aside time each year for “Serendipity Days”. The days we reserve each year for innovation and collaboration gave me space to remember my childhood — and imagine the future.