NPR Studio

ENTERPRISE PLATFORM DESIGN • PRODUCT STRATEGY • WORKFORCE EXPERIENCE
Background

NPR’s mission is to create a more informed public by working in partnership with over 250 independently operated member stations across the country.

I worked alongside a fabulous core team and countless co-creators across the network to make collaborating across NPR & stations easier, more sustainable, and scalable.

The team

Lauren Bracey Scheidt, product lead
Dina Nawas, product manager
Noah Carnahan, engineering lead
Sardeie Nur, Salesforce engineering lead

THE CHALLENGE

Teams across NPR maintained a number of products and services that station staff rely on, for everything from publishing content to receiving important information.

But they were difficult to access and prone to breaking — ultimately leading to broken trust.

We’d already made significant headway towards fully understanding and solving this problem through the unified network data model, and now it was time to really zero in on what people needed to rebuild that trust.

Discovery

We needed a better understanding of how our colleagues at NPR and member stations got their work done.

What do different needs and realities look like at different types of stations? How do folks at NPR communicate with folks at stations? And how did we get here in the first place?

Understanding the chain of events and history behind the fractured experiences and broken trust was critical to avoiding making the same mistakes.

Through a series of 1:1, hour-long interviews, we heard that:

  1. Craved more meaningful connection with folks from NPR

  2. Were frustrated by how difficult NPR made it to access information

  3. Raved about individual people at NPR who’d helped them in the past

  4. Lamented that they wish they could have more close relationships with more folks at NPR

It was clear that people trusted people, not organizations. This helped us move towards a clear articulation of our product vision and its guiding principles.

The NPR name carries serious weight. We want to work more closely, but we’re uncomfortably lean.

— Station colleague

I want [station staff] to feel that I’m a friend, a person to go to, who’s here to help.

— NPR colleague
VISION & PRINCIPLES

Studio is a centralized workspace for member station staff, where they can leverage all the benefits of their relationship with NPR and connect with the broader public media community.

This would be a task-based workspace experience that made full use of our new data model and paved a path towards deprecating old products and the fractured experience everyone had been subjected to.

To guide this work, I drafted four guiding principles: Studio is people-centric, centralized, extensible, and scalable.

  • Make life easier for everyone working in or with public media

    Acknowledge the wide range of needs and realities at different organizations (e.g. small vs. large stations, vendors, partner organizations) and their effects on staff

    Allow open access to all information to strengthen foundations for collaboration.

    Focus the experience on tasks — people are there to get their work done

  • Reduce silos and integrate with a single source of truth

    Encourage station staff to manage data about their job as well as their organization, which can be used more broadly across all NPR products and services

    Allow NPR staff to publish all information in one place accessible by all station staff

    Prioritize information to specific user groups, based on relevance and urgency

    Notify station staff of new and/or updated information based on individual notification preferences

  • Identify low risk, high impact improvements for tasks relevant to specific user groups

    Validate solutions with a specific user group before extending to others

    Build relevant features to extend existing solutions to new user groups

  • Solve for core tasks that are relevant to specific user groups, then expand the functionality to other groups who are responsible for similar tasks

    Build flexible solutions that are configurable when possible

    Repurpose solutions for different contexts

BUILDING ON PRIOR WORK + MVP

We’d already established a canonical source of truth through the data model.

This unlocked a number of things that weren’t previously possible: the ability for NPR staff to manage information centrally, target communications to relevant groups of station staff, and implement a standardized single sign-on process across station products.

These pieces of work enabled us to define and implement the core needs of the Studio platform: A foundation, reinforcement, entry point, and workspace.

We had everything but the workspace in place, and knew we wanted to build it on top of Salesforce Communities in order to take full advantage of the data model and segmentation capabilities. So we got to work designing our MVP.

It was definitely minimal: Station staff would be able to access the one tool that had implemented the new SSO process, give us information about their job through profile management, and access a new station support center. But that was enough to provide clear value to everyone!

MVP LAunch

During implementation, we designated Studio admins at every station, created a training program, and got them all up to speed before launch day.

After we launched, we had collected all the data we needed to be able to:

  1. Identify station staff user groups

  2. Target the most relevant, timely information to them

  3. Provide them with a space to connect with other folks who do similar work

  4. Introduce their core tasks to the Studio experience

Humble beginnings: The very first iteration of Studio.

WORKSHOPPING & CO-CREATION

I facilitated a number of workshops to bring together people in similar roles from across the network.

As a result, we had a clear path forward towards introducing tasks that we could build to address a specific discipline’s need, build it on top of Salesforce, and eventually extend it to other contexts.

I held additional co-creation workshops to crystalize our requirements for Studio’s core functionality.

As a result, we built and launched a workspace that allowed us to centralize all relevant apps, tasks, communications, and other information for station staff.

Everything was built on top of the reliable, updated, station-managed data collected and organized in our underlying Salesforce data model.

Station staff can access connected apps, as well as task-based apps built on top of Salesforce. Self-reported responsibilities (chosen from a finite list) determine default access to apps and tasks, and Studio admins at each station are authorized to

Station staff can access connected apps, as well as task-based apps built on top of Salesforce. Self-reported responsibilities (chosen from a finite list) determine default access to apps and tasks, and Studio admins at each station are authorized to provide access to any other app.

Whenever someone at NPR publishes new information, station staff can access it in the same space where they're getting their work done (and via an email notification). This also provides the ability to see who published the information and interact w

Whenever someone at NPR publishes new information, station staff can access it in the same space where they're getting their work done (and via an email notification). This also provides the ability to see who published the information and interact with them through likes and comments.

On the backend, all NPR staff can draft, publish, monitor, and archive their communications centrally.

On the backend, all NPR staff can draft, publish, monitor, and archive their communications centrally.

Groups provide spaces where folks across public media can connect with each other. This allows anyone to jump in to ask and answer questions (easing the burden on NPR support staff, since it avoids a new ticket), share best practices with each other,

Groups provide spaces where folks across public media can connect with each other. This allows anyone to jump in to ask and answer questions (easing the burden on NPR support staff, since it avoids a new ticket), share best practices with each other, celebrate wins, and build community.

NPR staff publish and manage resources like reference guides, brand kits, and standards centrally. This invites collaboration across teams, distributes the maintenance burden across more people, and prevents duplicative or conflicting information fro

NPR staff publish and manage resources like reference guides, brand kits, and standards centrally. This invites collaboration across teams, distributes the maintenance burden across more people, and prevents duplicative or conflicting information from being published in the first place. Station staff can easily reference this information through the resources section.

Station staff can find help through a Salesforce-powered support center. They can access articles, file tickets, and see tickets their station colleagues have filed. On the backend, the NPR support team can manage the knowledge base centrally, as wel

Station staff can find help through a Salesforce-powered support center. They can access articles, file tickets, and see tickets their station colleagues have filed. On the backend, the NPR support team can manage the knowledge base centrally, as well as interact with a much more robust and usable ticketing system.

Station staff tell us about their job through their profile, which they set up during registration.

Station staff tell us about their job through their profile, which they set up during registration.

Each station has at least one (often two) trained Studio admins who can manage their colleagues' accounts.

Each station has at least one (often two) trained Studio admins who can manage their colleagues' accounts.

Admins are responsible for adding and removing users as needed, as well as providing additional permissions on a case-by-case basis.

Admins are responsible for adding and removing users as needed, as well as providing additional permissions on a case-by-case basis.

Since launching Studio, NPR has:

  • Streamlined NPR-to-station communication channels

  • Deprecated 7 legacy systems and products

  • Increased transparency and meaningful collaboration across the NPR network

  • Used Studio’s core functionality to train staff from 190+ member stations on Grove, NPR’s cross-network CMS

  • Launched 10+ task-based apps built on top of Salesforce

And more! I designed Studio with scalability growth in mind, and am pleased to know the platform continues to mature.

IMPACT

Studio has made a massive impact on staff at NPR and stations by creating more brain space to spend on what matters the most: serving our shared audiences.