Summary
Media organizations face an existential performance crisis: they produce award-winning content that audiences increasingly ignore. Traditional metrics like reach and engagement mask a deeper failure, newsrooms don’t know if they’re actually helping anyone. This disconnect between organizational goals and audience needs creates unsustainable business models and erodes public trust. Meanwhile, threats and new competitors force them to reconsider their real value proposition. We’re addressing this through the Audience Help Desk, a confidential advisory service that applies service design principles and education to transform how newsrooms operate. Working with information providers from community startups to global media organizations, we guide teams through systematic redesign of their operating models. Our approach involves newsroom leaders, audience researchers, reporters, and product teams in collaborative sessions that shift focus from “”what stories should we tell?”” to “”what problems can we solve?”” Through structured consultations and practical frameworks like jobs-to-be-done analysis and service blueprinting, we help newsrooms identify where they’re losing audience value and implement concrete improvements. We’re just getting started and seeing both opportunity and pushback from legacy and newer media organizations. Our approach begins with fundamental questions about journalism’s value, with the goal of redesigning processes that hold organizations accountable for delivering real solutions. In this session, we’ll share what’s worked in helping media organizations adopt service design principles so far and our roadmap for broader adoption.
Upcoming events
Ask me anything – Authors of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation
Right horses for the right courses – how and when to democratize research
More Videos
"The UX field's expansion leads to pushback—people ask why researchers talk about areas owned by others like OCM."
Taylor KlassmanShaping the Next Era of UX Research: Collaborative Forum
March 11, 2025
"We showed that a skip is not a skip — it varies based on listener goals and trust in the playlist."
Sohit KarolDesigning Delightful Listening Experiences: Mixed Methods Research in the Age of Machine Learning
March 31, 2020
"An effective design organization treats operations as seriously as the work products."
Kristin SkinnerOpening Keynote: Org Design for Design Orgs
November 6, 2017
"Tracking the results of design ops initiatives allows you to tell data-informed stories, putting you on the same level as other leaders who speak data."
Jules MonzaUse These Words and Count These Things
September 25, 2024
"Don't design for a response, design for reasoning. Teach AI to think critically, analyze information, and arrive at logical conclusions."
Kritika YadavOptimizing AI Conversations: A Case Study on Personalized Shopping Assistance Frameworks
June 10, 2025
"You should think about what you uniquely will do because of your values that others might not tolerate."
Ellen ChisaThe Values of Design
November 29, 2023
"Science doesn’t just check truth; it has to win hearts and minds."
Lin NieWhen Thought-worlds Collide: Collaborating Between Research and Practice
March 10, 2021
"Attrition is real and painful but also an opportunity if we have a deep and broad hiring funnel."
Jennifer Bolduc Diane Gregorio Emily DayWhat's involved with getting people back to work?: A panel discussion
July 1, 2021
"If something is culturally resonant, it can shortcut to usefulness in a way that doesn’t seem entirely rational."
Neil BarrieWidening the Aperture: The Case for Taking a Broader Lens to the Dialogue between Products and Culture
March 25, 2024
