LMedia is managed by Laura Cochran, a digital content, business and design consultant to for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. The new wave of entrepreneurial journalists, navigating new tools, technologies and audiences, was Laura’s inspiration to begin LMedia.
LMedia is a private company and is not affiliated in any way with any other organization.
A Little About Laura
Laura Cochran is the features editor for Project Thunderdome at Digital First Media where she is managing the development of national content channels for health, food, entertainment, technology, families, faith, pets, travel, autos and home. These channels will be managed centrally by the Thunderdome staff and syndicated to media properties across the country, including those of the Journal Register Company and MediaNews Group with more than 800 print and online products serving 57 million Americans each month.
Navigating new tools, technologies and audiences is Laura’s strength. She is a constant guardian of the user experience and an evangelist for improving the experience design across all storytelling platforms. Today’s complex design demands have introduced a need to blend the disciplines of usability, information architecture and design, creating a common thread that introduces the expertise of these disciplines into everything we do.
Her expertise includes:
- Informing experience design decisions by becoming an expert on the situation in which a user will engage with our products;
- Informing experience design decisions by becoming an expert on the expectations of the user;
- Informing user experience decisions by becoming an expert on what makes a product useful, desirable, valuable, accessible, credible, findable and usable;
- Determining learnability of new features and the strategy for introducing them.
Moving from an industry that makes assumptions about its users to an industry that makes informed decisions about usability and features its users wants is the road we must travel. Experience design is a not a one and done process. We should be constantly learning about how users are engaging with our products, responding to their behaviors and evolving.
How can we do this?
Business, editorial, research and design teams must collaborate to do:
- Ongoing ethnographic research, learning how new technologies are impacting how we live;
- Ongoing usability studies on product suite;
- Reports on latest technology and usability trends.
So that digital leaders can make continuous product improvements based on the above findings. We must be proactive about how we can improve our products to take advantage of new behaviors and technologies.
Prior to joining Digital First Media she was a user experience manager for new product development at Gannett where she designed research strategies and developed prototypes for new ways to engage audiences outside of Gannett’s core.
Laura’s career was influenced and shaped by her early career experiences serving as a liaison between reporters, editors, designers, and multimedia producers at the Commercial Appeal and washingtonpost.com. For breaking news, as well as enterprise and investigative reporting, she worked closely with every department, determining which channel was best suited for each situation. What she found was missing in these conversations was the user’s voice.
Prior to joining Gannett, Laura served as a liaison between reporters, editors, designers, and multimedia producers at the Commercial Appeal, and most recently at washingtonpost.com. For breaking news, as well as enterprise and investigative reporting, she worked closely with every department, determining which channel was best suited for each situation. In this role, she used audience analysis and her expertise in different content platforms to determine what the approach should be, as well as, what storytelling method made the most sense.
Sacred Ground: the building of the Pentagon Memorial
As the lead producer and project editor for the 2008 Pentagon Memorial dedication, Laura managed the design and development of a series of photo, video and interactive stories that would be shared throughout the year leading up to the dedication. Taking advantage of our team’s multimedia strengths and interactive design capabilities, the team created a virtual experience for national and international visitors traveling to the memorial and also for those that were unable to experience the memorial due to physical distance.
The coverage was divided up into three categories – the families, the construction and the memorial. Visit the virtual memorial, where you’ll find 3-dimensional views of the park, biographical information on each victim, and an illustration that highlights each victim’s memorial bench. Download the audio tour, which includes insights into the design of the memorial from Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman. Also, visit the multimedia page to watch documentary video coverage of the Pentagon victims, the construction and the design concept.
AWARD WINNER: White House News Photographers Association, Best Multimedia Package, OJA, Best Feature Presentation, SND, Best of Multimedia Design
In my spare time, I also enjoy coming up with crazy ideas and executing on them. Last year, when Gannett announced it would be furloughing its employees for a second week my colleagues and I wanted to make the most of it. After all, that is what we do best as a team.
Initially, @jodiontheweb and I came up with the idea of a #furloughhouseswap while brainstorming about how we can lessen the pain of this ugly recession and the mandatory steps we must take to hopefully stave off anymore layoffs. It was a way to – lets say – maximize our Gannett assets. Those assets in Fort Myers, Denver and of course, Honolulu were the first mentioned!! Then in true IDEO fashion, we asked ourselves, “How might we connect those seeking free or cheap housing during their furlough in another city with others taking furlough in the same week that might live in that city.”
After 7 seconds of consideration, Jodi and I jumped online and started the wave. After we considered it for 30 seconds, and recruited the awesome @yurivictor to join our mission, we decided to create a Web site for the greater furlough good.
The Chicago Tribune was calling me two hours later after seeing twitter chatter and others followed, including Fortune Magazine. We even made Joe Strupp’s top 10 newspaper business stories of the year.
Other projects of note
In 2008, I developed the personal site of former Washington Post columnist Sally Squires. While working at The Washington Post, Sally Squires and I worked on many projects together including the Lean Plate Club Family Challenge.
She is a native of the D.C. area and received her undergraduate degree in journalism from James Madison University. After graduation, she spent a couple of years in Memphis getting her master’s degree in journalism administration, which is where she got her first start in online journalism at The Commercial Appeal. When she’s not at work, she’s doing anything that involves being outside.
