21st-Century Journalism | Design

Collaborative Problem Solving for Journalists: A Workshop

Journalism + Design believes that design processes can help journalists become more imaginative, experimental, user-focused, and comfortable navigating the unknown.

We recently hosted a workshop for reporters and editors on collaborative problem-solving in newsrooms. By learning the basics of design processes, journalists will be able to guide teams in their newsrooms through the steps of building multi-platform projects rxcare.net. Led by Nina Ong, director of product design at Scripps Networks, and Beth Fuller, a senior interaction designer at Google, the workshop led participants through an exercise that explored ways to bring the audience into the reporting process from the outset.

At the end of the workshop, Ong and Fuller each of asked the participants to share an epiphany they’d had that day. Several said that thinking about your user — the target audience for the story — was a critical component of developing story ideas.

Here’s Ong and Fuller’s presentation on collaborative problem solving. Feel free to try it with your colleagues.

And here are some more great resources on how to integrate design processes into newsrooms: