Last week, the 13th of March to be exact, we met up with Submarine for the first time. Armed with our redesigned visitor flow iterations, and a healthy dose of nervousness, we entered the office of Submarine. The table that we set at was fully filled with all of the people involved in the project. Which included Gijs Kattenberg (fronted developer), Christiaan de Rooij (interface designer), Yaniv Wolf (Marketing and Publicity), Marlijn Koers (production assistant), Stefania Bercu (our embedded researcher), Bernhard Rieder (project leader), Loes Borgers (our MediaLab coach) and of course the four of us. Although it was very good to see the actual faces behind the names that we’ve heard during the passed weeks, the meeting went a little bit different then we initially expected.
First, we presented the redesign iterations of the visitor flow that Geert and Yannick have been busy with the last few weeks. Using the redesign as an example we shortly explained why we made certain design choices and which features we’ve added to the visualization that Google Analytics does not include. Unfortunately, it became clear that they had something slightly different in mind. The guys from Submarine explained to us that it is not so much about redesigning the visualizations of Google Analytics, but rather designing a additional tool that catches correlations between data and data that is really specific to interactive documentaries. Less focused on measuring numbers and instead more focused on measuring user engagement through for example mouse movements, hovering and the interactions while watching the documentary. This means concentrating on specific elements instead of on a whole visitor flow. For example concentrating on ‘drop offs’ and finding out WHY people drop off by correlating to all different sort of data. This also means correlating for example the way people interact with stories to certain age groups.
In order for them to retrieve actionable information about this subject, we should focus on correlating different pieces of data and then asking aimed questions about what answers to these questions would provide meaningful information that Submarine can actually act on. This all might sound pretty abstract, so we will give you an easy example of what this new approach could look like. For instance, a correlation could possibly be made between the ‘referral source’ and the ‘time spent on site’. Subsequently a targeted question that would produce meaningful information for Submarine could then be ‘Where do visitors come from and what influence has this on the interaction with their creation?’. Say, the NRC refers to Last Hijack on their website, people that come via the NRC then would be very interested in interactive documentaries and therefore spent a long time on the website. This would mean that it would be wise for Submarine to invest into their relationship with the NRC because evidently this referral produces a lot of engaged visitors. Also, Submarine indicated that they would like us to focus more on individual problems like the drop offs of certain pages and/of episodes, instead of providing an overview of the entire visitor flow.
This new approach should therefore focus less on the display of quantitative information and more on providing meaningful answers to correlated data and thereon embed this into clear visualizations. Although we were surprised by the fact that we have to adjust our approach to the project, we do feel like this could be a fresh start for us and that this meeting motivated us to challenge ourselves to get the best possible end product for Submarine. Talk to you soon!