Documenting Workflows at Condé Nast
2017
Condé Nast’s operations team approached research with an ask: Ahead of a major restructure, they wanted to know how each title’s print and digital teams got work done. Additionally, the Co/Lab team at Condé wanted to explore the potential for a proprietary project management tool. So the timing was perfect for a large-scale, detailed documentation of how the many teams at Condé get work done.
Primary Research Questions
How does each print team publish an issue from start to finish?
How does each digital team publish a story from start to finish?
What are the differences between these workflows? Are there outliers?
Where and how can tools be consolidated?
Methods and Scope
Service blueprinting, content analysis
We took the “design” out of service design blueprinting, which gave us a pragmatic way to meticulously map the action taken by the user, the tools used, policies behind the step, pain points, and ideas for improvement using five respective swim lanes.
We needed to get over twenty workflows mapped in a three-week period, so we divided into two pairs of researchers and split the teams between us. By gathering between three and seven subject matter experts (typically senior editors, photo leads, production managers, etc.), we were able to map out entire workflows in a matter of hours—resulting in rooms full of post-it notes that we then transcribed into Google Sheets.
Then we used content analysis to codify and categorize steps within the workflow. This allowed us to stack them, compare them, and ultimately collapse them into an articulated, representable process that could be shared and discussed.
Learnings
Our blueprinting and subsequent content analysis gave operations a detailed view of how teams get work done. It also answered questions around differences between workflows, proving that—despite calling things by different names—teams are ultimately doing the same thing. This was important because it meant that teams and tools could be consolidated without major disruptions to the overall process.
The blueprints also revealed the huge array of tools used. The above graphic shows the percentage of teams using each tool per step. The amount of tools used were causing confusion and redundancies in steps for both print and digital teams. For example, a photo editor at Traveler will upload a photo to the CMS, then add it to the Trello card, then ping the story’s editor to let her know it’s ready.
Outcome
Our deliverable to the operations team for this project was a traditional research report with a recommendation on how to consolidate tools and reduce the noise ahead of the restructure.
We presented the same deliverable to Co/Lab leadership, who greenlit a workflow tool that came to be known as Muse.