Welcome.
I'm a journalist and a news editor on the Mississippi coast. I like creating and curating content of all kinds, so take a look around and don't hesitate to contact me.
I'm a journalist and a news editor on the Mississippi coast. I like creating and curating content of all kinds, so take a look around and don't hesitate to contact me.
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” - Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO
That sounds like some real corporate nonsense, right? I thought so too. But the first design sprint I participated ended with workable ideas, and everyone walked away energized. It's really just another tool for creative problem solving, a way to escape normal routines and hang-ups to make quick decisions and get a working solution that can be refined (or axed) over time. The best part is it starts and ends with the most important thing: talking to people.
My first exposure to the design thinking process was an internal challenge at McClatchy, where anyone in the company could form teams and apply to participate in a weeklong bootcamp. The team selected from that week would go on to participate in a multi-month challenge at Matter, along with other companies and start-ups. I got together with a group of young Sun Herald employees from both the newsroom and advertising and we created a video application (to the tune of Taylor Swift). During a week in Kansas City, two of us joined other teams from across the company, as well as the developers of an up-and-coming grocery app McClatchy had partnered with, to come up with a solution aimed at millennial grocery shoppers. We had a blast! It was exhausting, but each team came up with really innovative ideas. Read more about my experience on McClatchy's Innovation Blog.
The Sun Herald has been fortunate to have leadership that is very supportive of innovation and the design thinking process. My colleague, Justin Mitchell, and I were asked to lead a three-day session for the advertising department, focused on a solution for better communication between advertising clients and Sun Herald sales specialists. We asked both advertising and non-advertising employees to participate, as diversity always creates better ideas and better results. The ad folks were pretty skeptical at first, but they warmed up as soon as viable solutions started coming to light. Before we were even done, the digital advertising manager was already coming up with ideas that he later implemented with the staff. One solution, a kind of web portal for new and possible clients, was made a reality and has been successful. Read more about the session here.
Newspapers have long been run on a beat structure, where reporters are assigned topics or governments or geographic areas to cover as their own. But like everything else, that's been changing. Our executive editor wanted a design thinking session that asked, what should we be covering? We had a lot of newsroom people participate, which wasn't without its challenges, as well as a couple people from outside the company. Both ideas that the teams came up with have either been put into action or are in the works -- we started a daily Facebook Live newscast, a podcast and are working on an email newsletter targeted to millennials. Both teams figured out it wasn't just what we were covering that was a problem, it was how we were covering it.
McClatchy has continued to host company-wide design thinking challenges, and we participated in another one in 2016 because we had zeroed in on another problem that needed a creative solution. Taking some of what we learned in the newsroom challenge, we wanted to tackle the Sun Herald's reputation and visibility in the community. This process was once a week for nine weeks, which had different pros and cons than the intensive weeklong or three-day challenge. We had a hard time focusing in on one solution, but ended up with some good ideas to build on: expanding and experimenting with Facebook Live videos and looking for ways to build interaction with readers, both online and in person. Read more about the session here.
