SI 501 Final Report by lizblankenship

Contextual Inquiry Project Report A look at media-related processes and flows at the Accent Reduction Institute

SI 501 Prepared by

Media Mediation Liz Blankenship Yung-Ju Chang Maureen Hanratty David Jackson Julie Judkins Released on December 17th, 2007

Table of Contents Executive Summary

Background

Methodology

Key Findings and Recommendations

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Working at ARI

Maintain Open Work Plan

Maintain One Consistent Voice

Improving the process for responding to media requests Media Request Workflow Improving the publication of ARI news on the website Content Management System

5 5 7 7

Conclusion

Appendices

Appendix A: Additional recommendations Blog with RSS feed

9 9

Use a Web-based calendar

Organize contact information

Use Google Alerts to find articles about ARI

Appendix B: Models

Consolidated Artifact Model: Website News Sections

Physical Layout of ARI Workspace

Swimming Lane Diagram

Appendix C: Workflow Visions

Proposed Media Request Response Workflow

Proposed Content Management System Workflow

Appendix D: Example Web Form

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19 i

Executive Summary In September 2007, the Media Mediation team of graduate students from the University of Michigan’s School of Information began working on a project with Ann Arbor’s Accent Reduction Institute (ARI). The purpose of this project was to provide consultation to the firm to help it cope with processing the rising influx of media attention that the company has received. The scope of the project was two-fold. ARI has an ad hoc process for receiving requests from media outlets and responding to them in a timely and personal fashion. This has been a workable routine as long as the requests were light in number, but ARI has recently found themselves reaching a larger, national audience and the company’s staff has been pressured to keep up with it using their informal process. The second half of the project addressed the process after a story has been published or broadcast. ARI makes use of the media coverage it receives by making the stories available on its website. The purpose of this is to attract new clients by building in them a confidence that the firm is the leader in the field of American Accent Training. To this end, it is important that the website be refreshed with the latest stories so that the site users will see that ARI is continuing to build its reputation. Unfortunately, the process for updating the website has been ad hoc as well, with the result that there are usually long delays between the breaking of a media story and its publication on ARI’s website. An overarching issue for both ends of the process is the burden these matters have heretofore placed on the time of the President of ARI. At the same time, a new employee was hired for the purpose of taking on matters at the company dealing with marketing and public relations at the same time that Media Mediation began this project. It became a part of the project to define how this new hire could best be incorporated into the abovementioned processes, while at the same time continuing to keep the President in the loop and fulfill her contractual role as public face of the company. In fulfillment of these goals, Media Mediation has created recommendations for new workflow processes and for the adoption of a content management system (CMS) that will allow the staff at ARI to maximize the timeliness of handling media while at the same time freeing up the time of the key personnel to fulfill their other duties. Media Mediation highly recommends the immediate implementation of the new workflows outlined in this report in order that personnel will be familiar with the routines involved so that these steps will become automatic to them. This way, the next time they find themselves the subject of heavy media attention they will be able to handle the requests for stories without fuss. After a story breaks, they will be able to post it to their website in a relatively timely fashion and receive maximum benefit from the coverage. Media Mediation also highly recommends that a content management system be adopted at least in the long run. The benefits of such a system to the company will soon pay off for the company, both financially and in training costs. With it, ARI will be newly empowered in shaping the content as they themselves see fit and the process of updating will become a simple, routine process that will unburden the firm’s employees. Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Background The Accent Reduction Institute (ARI) was created in 2005 when Menlo Associates acquired English Communication Services, a company founded by Judy Ravin, the President of ARI. The company is now located in the historic Kerrytown district of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where it shares office space with its sister company, Menlo Innovations. ARI’s mission is to serve as “the industry leader in American Accent Training, providing non-native English speakers with proven techniques to quickly master English pronunciation” (from www.lessaccent.com). ARI is a small company with few full-time employees. The central staff consists of the company President, an Operations Manager, and an Accent Reduction Specialist who doubles as a marketing and media specialist. In addition, the company employs several part-time Accent Reduction Specialists who provide instruction to clients, and a part-time intern who principally runs the company’s Google AdWords campaign. ARI also shares several back-office personnel with Menlo Innovations. As a young, growing business, ARI focuses a great deal of effort on building up its name among individuals and associations of business professionals, as well as institutions and corporations whose employees have need for its services. The central purpose for seeking media attention is to expand this client base. Getting coverage on a national scale is a key ingredient for acquiring more major corporate clients such as General Motors. To this end, ARI is seeking to build on recent coverage in national forums such as the New York Times and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. One issue that makes good media attention a necessity is the need to combat the misconceptions that sometimes form around the concept of accent reduction. ARI wishes to promote its ethic of maintaining the unique cultural identity of non-native speakers of English while at the same time teaching them to master English pronunciation to achieve professional goals in communication. ARI makes further use of media coverage by posting announcements of stories on its website and providing links to the actual stories. The purpose of this is to cultivate potential clients’ confidence in ARI as the leader in the field of American Accent Training by demonstrating the mass media’s interest in the company. It is a high priority for the company to ensure that clients browsing the webpage are able to learn of the latest coverage. The secondary purpose is to attract reporters to do a story about the company and educate those reporters so they will want to do stories that get ARI’s message out. ARI anticipates ever-increasing media attention as it grows and brought in Media Mediation to help it cope with the influx of requests received from media outlets. Media Mediation was tasked with developing solutions for building a more regularized process for responding to incoming requests by media groups for a story. Furthermore, it was charged with solving issues surrounding the publishing of the coverage it receives on its website. The goals the team set out address was to reduce the burden of duties placed Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

directly on the President of ARI; bring uniformity to the ARI website and reduce the lags of time that occur in posting items so that the maximum benefit could be realized from newly published media coverage; and determine how the new Accent Reduction Specialist hired in September could be used to accomplish these goals.

Methodology We began by meeting with the ARI staff on Tuesday, September 25th in their office to get an initial impression of the company and the project goals. We also discussed an initial list of personnel to contact for interviews. Based on these suggestions, we interviewed the company President (U01), the Operations Manager (U02), a newly hired employee, the Accent Reduction Specialist (U05), who will be tasked with duties in marketing and public relations, and an intern (U06) who works on the company’s Google AdWords campaign. Because ARI relies heavily on external personnel to carry out many of its functions, we also sought out the Co-President of Inner Circle Media (U03), ARI’s web design firm, and the President of ARI’s sister company Menlo Innovations (U04) to get an idea of some of the other stakeholders in the processes under examination. In the course of several of our interviews, reference was made to one more actor who was involved in the updating of the ARI website, and we decided to do an additional interview to capture information from this user (U07). In addition to conducting these interviews, we examined the ARI website in depth to gain an understanding of how the site was organized and what users could get out of it (See Consolidated Artifact Model: Website News Sections, Appendix B). After gathering data from the interviews, we met as a full team within 36 hours of each one to discuss and analyze the data collected. In these sessions, we sketched out loose models showing the web of communication between the interviewee and all the others both within and outside of ARI; we sketched out the basic sequence of steps that each interviewee followed as part of their work pattern with regard to ARI’s media handling; we addressed any possible problems that were either identified to us by the interviewee or otherwise were revealed by our analysis; we took other pertinent notes; and we brainstormed initial ideas for solutions. We next took the sketches we had made of the communication flows and individual workflow steps and used them to construct full models showing how these played out across the whole company. We also made an assessment of those elements of ARI’s culture that we had been able to take away from the interviews. In addition, we examined ARI’s physical workspace (see Physical Layout of ARI Workspace, Appendix B) to see how this affected how the people at the company worked. Lastly, we examined the evidence we had taken from the part of the ARI website related to media content and identified those elements that affected the process. Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Our next step was to take all the notes we had gathered from the various post-interview discussions and organized them into a narrative that told a story of how ARI functions and how it has historically dealt and used media in the past. We used this chart to identify problems, ask questions, and think about ideas. Finally, we met together and, utilizing this diagram and the various models we had constructed, identified the root issues at hand and brainstormed solutions to the problems preventing ARI from making best use of their resources to cope with the increasing swell of media attention the company has been subject to of late. From this we created several recommendations and identified the constraints that might be involved in implementing them. We visualized new workflow processes for the most important recommendations and diagrammed them out for clarity of interpretation.

Key Findings and Recommendations This section outlines our findings and recommendations. We will explain our evidence for the findings and highlight things to keep as well as several ways ARI might improve. Additional recommendations are located in Appendix A.

What’s Working at ARI Maintain Open Work Plan Finding: ARI staff work in close proximity to one another and this proximity makes verbal communication easy, immediate and frequent. It also helps build camaraderie among ARI employees. Evidence: The three main ARI employees’ workstations’ are huddled together in one section of the office. Evidence: The ease of communication afforded by the close working environment allows employees to collaborate on projects, "[we] talk every day, every five minutes, working together," and keeps everyone in the loop, "Everyone seems very aware of what's going on with ARI." Evidence: The following quote testifies to the open work environment's impact on the company's tight-knit culture, "It's usually easy to connect with people around you because it's so open here." Recommendations: Maintain the company's close-working environment. This will be difficult as ARI grows but we believe it is essential for communication and fundamental to the personal, familial culture of the company. As with any workspace ARI will need to balance employees’ privacy and ability to work on individual tasks with group aims like communication and collaboration. Thus, ARI should continue to let employees use the

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

company's conference room to make phone calls and work on tasks that require concentration. Maintain One Consistent Voice Finding: Maintaining one consistent voice for the company is important. Evidence: The President is concerned about negative coverage about accent reduction. Evidence: President does all interviews with reporters. Evidence: Media inquiries are "unique, completely different, different spins." Recommendation: President should continue to represent the company as the sole public face by continuing to fulfill all appropriate interview requests.

Improving the process for responding to media requests Media Request Workflow Finding: ARI does not have a set process for responding to media requests. This has not been a problem so far but may be in the future, as the company continues to grow. (For an illustration of the current process, see Swimming Lane Model, Appendix B). This major finding is broken into several smaller findings as follows: Finding: Media coverage often leads to requests for coverage from other media outlets. ARI struggles to respond to the media during these busy times. Evidence: When a New York Times article about ARI was published on June 5th, 2007, it triggered a spate of media coverage that continued throughout June. Employees stated that it was hard to “keep up” with media requests during this time period. The Accent Reduction Specialist stated that it would be “hectic” if many media agencies contacted ARI at once. Finding: The newly hired Accent Reduction Specialist, whose job role is still being determined, is a good candidate to manage a media request workflow. Evidence: The Accent Reduction Specialist’s background in marketing and public relations and she will spend 85% of her time working on media related matters. The company President had already determined that she would take over many of the President’s responsibilities related to the media. The Operations Manager is the point of contact for emails from the website. She will forward any media requests to the President but after that she is no longer involved in the process. Finding: The President is very busy but currently expends a great deal of effort to fulfill media requests when they occur. Evidence: At the present time, the President is the only person that deals directly with media agencies. Sometimes the President sends basic statistics, financials, or other documents of interest to media, in order to round out the interview. Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Finding: The web site does not currently provide contact information that is specifically related to media requests. Evidence: In almost all circumstances, the media contact ARI. There is one contact email provided on the ARI website and the majority 80% of media requests come through this email. However, most emails are from potential clients. Sometimes reporters phone ARI. Finding: It is important to respond to media requests quickly and efficiently. Evidence: The President expressed that it is important to respond quickly to media requests, otherwise they will move on. Therefore, she, if at all possible, responds to media requests within one or two hours. The general process ought to be simple, but it is inefficient because ARI does not have a standardized process to deal with the media information flow. Recommendation: Create an email address directly targeted to media requests. Have the Accent Reduction Specialist be responsible for the inbox tied to this media focused email. Once these steps are in place, implement the following workflow (see Proposed Media Request Workflow, Appendix C): 1. When a media request occurs, the Accent Reduction Specialist will forward the request, through email, to the President. 2. Simultaneously, the Accent Reduction Specialist will respond to the media agency and suggest possible interview times, based on the Presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s web-based calendar. 3. When the President receives the Accent Reduction Specialistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s email, she will respond to the Accent Reduction Specialist with her response whether the request is worth pursuing (i.e. it will not result in negative coverage). 4. The President (or the Accent Reduction Specialist) will contact the media agency and set up an interview. 5. The interview will occur. 6. The President will respond to any follow-up questions. 7. The Accent Reduction Specialist will provide any additional documents, as requested by the media outlet. Benefits: The primary benefit of this workflow is that the timeliness of responses to the media is preserved, even in the case of multiple requests at one time. Additionally, the President will continue to be the public face of the company by fulfilling interview requests from media but her workload regarding media request will be greatly reduced.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Improving the publication of ARI news on the website Content Management System Finding: Updating the ARI website involves multiple people with different roles and simple updates require more overhead for the involved parties than is necessary. This influences the quality and consistency of the website content as well as the lag time in adding news items. (For an illustration of the current process, see Swimming Lane Model, Appendix B). This major finding is broken into several smaller findings as follows: Finding: People updating the website have different relationships with the company and don't communicate with one another. Evidence: The President's sister updates the website on a completely voluntary basis. The main contact at the website design firm does all other updates to the website and has a fixed hourly rate. They both communicate primarily with people at ARI and are not generally aware of each other's updates. Finding: Time is an important factor in updating the website, but disorganized communication about updates can interfere with efficiency. Publishing news articles about ARI to the website draws attention of potential clients and encourages further media requests, therefore it is essential that news items are updated in a timely manner. Evidence: The web design firm says that "it may take a couple of weeks to add a little news item" because of emailing back and forth for clarification. Sometimes the President calls and requests for multiple items to be updated in one day. Since the two people updating the website do not work within the office and indeed are not ARI employees, they do not know the company in great detail and clarification is sometimes needed to proceed with updates. The design firm has emailed ARI, suggesting that the company adopt a CMS to increase the efficiency of updates, but received no response. Finding: The news portions of the website are inconsistent. Evidence: The structure of each news item posted varies (see Consolidated Artifact Model: Website News Sections, Appendix B). The news items on the sidebar and news page differ. For example, a news item added to the right sidebar of the main page may never be added to the news page accessible via the navigation menu. Finding: The time of ARI employees is a limited and valuable resource, especially for the President. Having a scalable process in place is a concern for accommodating increased volumes of media attention in the future. Evidence: When an important piece about ARI prints in the media, there is an influx of attention, such as over the summer of 2007, when an article about ARI in the NY Times spurred additional local and national coverage. With several projects in the pipeline, ARI anticipates a new wave of media attention in early 2008.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Long-term recommendation: Migrate the website to a content management system (see Proposed Content Management System Workflow, Appendix C). Have personnel inside ARI add information to the website. Specifically, make sure that the news portion of the site is easy to edit by navigating to simple online forms that have fields for the date, message to be posted, etc. Alternative recommendation: Have Inner Circle Media create a form that dynamically updates the website with the news items to add (see Dynamic Web Form, Appendix D). Benefits: Either of these recommendations promote consistency within the website and an easy and thus timely way for someone within the company to perform updates. Further, a CMS (content management system) would empower ARI with updating all website content. It would make it easy to maintain a blog. This system eliminates the need for web programming skills to update the website. Drawbacks: • Initial financial cost - A CMS or other change to the current website structure requires an initial setup investment, and may require a maintenance fee. • Initial time investment - ARI and Inner Circle Media must define requirements for a new system together. • Training - Though a CMS is relatively easy to update, users at ARI would need an introduction to the system to feel comfortable with performing updates themselves. Short-term recommendation: We recognize that a CMS is long-term solution that the company may not adopt immediately. In the interim, that ARI use the same workflow as the one we devised for use with the CMS, up to the point where the Accent Reduction Specialist has prepared the content. This addresses the need to simplify the channels of communication between ARI and its external website updaters and should allow content to be posted quicker so that the website is kept fresh and up to date.

Conclusion The goal of this project is to provide a scalable system for ARI that will enable its staff to cope with a growing influx of media coverage that can be used to help the company grow and attract a larger client base. To further this end, we have recommended that ARI continue with its tradition of an open work environment and a singular public face in the person of its President. In addition, we have recommended the implementation of new work routines that will allow the staff to handle periods of intense media interest without losing the integrity of their personal approach. Finally, we have recommended ARI use a content management system for their website to ease the burden that updating of content currently creates for the staff. With the retention or adoption of these solutions, the Accent Reduction Institute will be able to handle more media requests and do so in a timely fashion that maximizes gains while reducing the burden on key staff. Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Appendices Appendix A: Additional recommendations Blog with RSS feed Finding: ARI likes to keep current and potential clients aware of newly published media coverage. Evidence: ARI has used email blasts to inform "friends of ARI" on news items. Evidence: ARI staff have discussed starting a newsletter. The Accent Reduction Specialist would develop the newsletter. Recommendations: ARI should use a blog to fulfill the functions of a newsletter and email blasts. A blog could be implemented using the content management system. The Accent Reduction Specialist would create the content for the blog. Clients, potential clients, or media persons could subscribe to the blog via an RSS feed. Benefits: The blog will keep people informed of what is currently happening at ARI. Potential clients can get a better idea of what ARI is all about. A blog could eliminate the need to send out email blasts that might annoy people. Blogs are more modern, and upto-date than traditional newsletters. Finally they are very easy and fast to update.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Use a Web-based calendar Findings: ARI does not have a shared, central calendar to schedule events and appointments. Evidence: The President of ARI is the only one to schedule public events in a physical calendar on the wall. She and other employees are not able to check them once she leaves the office. The physical calendar on the wall is mostly revised by the president of ARI; others seldom add things on it. Evidence: The Accent Reduction Specialist will be outside of office working at home approximately one day a week, and the president of ARI is often out of office for business, too. Findings: Employees in ARI have their own calendars, which are not intended to be shared with others. Recommendation: Use a web-based calendar, for example a calendar in Microsoft Outlook (ARI's email client), setting the calendar to be individual or public depending on the events to control the accessibility. The web-based calendar will allow the Accent Reduction Specialist to schedule interviews on behalf of the President. Benefits: The web-based calendar will help ARI staff members keep track of media coverage related events and deadlines. Many web-based calendar allow users to share their calendars to specific groups, share events to the whole company, and keep some events private. In addition, the employees, including the President, are able to check their schedules on the web-based calendar at any computer on the web.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Organize contact information Finding: ARI does not have a reliable system for storing contact information. This major finding is broken into several smaller findings as follows: Finding: ARI relies almost solely on archived emails to find contact information. Evidence: The President looks through old emails to find contact information if she wants to get back in touch with a reporter. The Accent Reduction Specialist has created a contact list for people at different newspapers in a word document that is also stored in hard-copy form. Finding: ARI does not use email lists. Evidence: Company President creates email blasts to inform clients and friends of ARI of newly published media coverage. Currently she adds email addresses oneby-one when she composes these emails. Short-term recommendation: Organize contact information in Microsoft Outlook (ARI's email client). The following url is a tutorial provided by Microsoft Office Online that provides information on how to organize contacts into groups, such as "Media Contacts," "Clients," etc. This tutorial also covers sending out emails by groups, sharing contacts among coworkers, and schedule meetings with contacts. http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC011036431033 This recommendation will allow ARI employees to send an email message to multiple people without copying and pasting from archived emails. Also, ARI employees will be able to share contacts with each other. Alternative short-term recommendation: Organize contacts in a traditional rolodex. As suggested by the Operations Manager, maintain two rolodexes, one for client contacts and the other for media contacts. These two parts of the business operate independently so contacts need not be housed together. Also, it will be much faster and easier to find a contact if they are divided amongst two rolodexes. The disadvantage of using a rolodex is that contact information is not available online, and so inaccessible outside of the office. Long-term recommendation: Organize contact information in a database. Include various fields so staff can search by organization name, language, location, etc. The electronic database will give ARI more powerful search capabilities than offered by an address book in an email client. This solution is more viable if the business grows substantially. Benefits: There are many benefits to organizing contact information for media contacts in a robust way. Finding contact information will be much faster. Sending out email notifications to multiple people will be faster and more efficient.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Use Google Alerts to find articles about ARI Finding: If a reporter does not tell the President of ARI when an article will be published, she often takes additional effort to look for new article about ARI on her own. Evidence: The president of ARI uses Google to search her own name when she thinks a story is going to be published. Take the case of the Detroit Free Press story, when she discovered that it was wired out through news service to multiple newspapers through Googling. Recommendation: Any employee can use Google Alerts to capture any article about ARI. Whenever an article is published, Google Alert will send notification to email address. (The President has already implemented this recommendation and has reported that the Google Alert has been effective in finding stories related to ARI). Benefits: Allows ARI to find articles and other media coverage that would otherwise slip through the cracks. It is automatic; thus they don't have to construct the query over and over again.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Appendix B: Models Consolidated Artifact Model: Website News Sections Intent: Publicize ARI's media coverage to inform potential clients of the company's media attention in order to give them confidence that they are leaders in the filed. Usage: -News items are posted to two distinct parts of ARI's website. The sidebar is on the homepage while the news page is accessible via the navigation on the homepage. -Links are provided to pdfs or webpages of articles and other media coverage. -Content is added by outside website updaters per instructions of ARI staff. News Sidebar

Homepage Navigation

Breakdown: News items must be posted by personnel external to ARI. Requests to post media coverage must be clarified with ARI President to determine where content should be placed, causing delays in updating.

News Page

Comments: Provides link for website users to access the dedicated news page.

Comments: Content on news page often differs from news sidebar Comments: -Located on right side of homepage -Includes events and media coverage -Often inconsistent with items posted on newspage

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Physical Layout of ARI Workspace

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Swimming Lane Diagram ARI's Current Workflow for Media Request Response & Website Publication

This diagram shows the sequence of events that occur in the entire media coverage process, from initial contact with the media outlet to publication on the ARI website. Each "lane" represents a person involved in the process. Red lighting bolts denote breakdowns in the process.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Swimming Lane Diagram ARI's Current Workflow for Media Request Response & Website Publication (continued)

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Appendix C: Workflow Visions Proposed Media Request Response Workflow

This diagram is a vision of the new workflow process for responding to media requests. This workflow integrates the Accent Reduction Specialist into the media response process. The Accent Reduction Specialist will take on duties that were once fulfilled by the President and this should help free the President's time for other tasks.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Proposed Content Management System Workflow

This diagram is a vision of the new workflow process for adding news items to the ARI website. We recommend that the Accent Reduction Specialist be the "Website Updater." This workflow can also be effective if a content management system is not implemented as if designates and clarifies roles that are currently undefined at ARI.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute

Appendix D: Example Web Form

Dynamic Web Form This is an example of a dynamic web form, an alternative to a full content management system. To add a news item to the homepage, this website uses a form that automatically generates a link to the news story on the main page. The link opens the page where the text of the news item is.

Contextual Inquiry Project Report - Accent Reduction Institute