Summary
Goal
Plan and create Nikkei BizRuptors, a dynamic platform for Asian business case studies, enhancing learning and teaching experiences.
Revolutionising traditional business education with interactive, multimedia-rich content for the Asian market.
Insight Gained
Revolutionising traditional business education with interactive, multimedia-rich content for the Asian market.
Overview
Nikkei, Inc is a Japanese media and publishing company based in Tokyo specialising in business and financial publications. It owns the world’s largest financial newspaper, The Nikkei, also known as The Nihon Keizai or ‘Japan Economics Newspaper’, which has a daily circulation in excess of 1.7million.
Alongside this, it also owns The Nikkei’s British equivalent, the Financial Times, published in London, which it acquired in 2015, and its portfolio of additional holdings includes companies focused on broadcasting, digital media, books, magazines and database services.
A Gap in the Market
Keen to expand its presence within the academic and research-focused field, Nikkei, Inc sought to create a digital platform that would collate an extensive range of business-themed analytical case studies. These case studies would be created by Nikkei, Inc and would focus on Asia-based businesses, for which they had identified a gap in the market. The platform would be used by learners and educators from across Asia, and would provide them with paid-for access to the digital tools to facilitate, learn, and apply unique business practices in Asia into real business situations.
To conceive the design, development and delivery of the platform, Nikkei Business Lab Asia Ltd – a subsidiary of Nikkei – recruited ddx to provide technical consulting, user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design, strategy and implementation work from a prototype up to minimum viable product (MVP) stage.
Amid a challenging working landscape that saw the functionality requirements of the platform evolve throughout the development process, ddx successfully helped Nikkei Business Lab Asia Ltd launch Nikkei BizRuptors – a dynamic digital case study platform that provides actionable context on Asian businesses for business educators and learners. The platform brings the latest action and context in the Asian business scene from the news to the classroom with a fresh approach to case studies, allowing users to learn through stories, multimedia, and discussion with other peers.
Expanding into Education
With Nikkei, Inc having enjoyed long-standing success in the media and publishing sector, the company was keen to expand its presence within the education and research market.
To facilitate this, they sought to develop a digital platform akin to the Harvard Business Publishing Education – a portal that collates articles, books and case studies on various aspects of business, such as strategy, leadership, operations and finance. The platform would provide its users – primarily university students and professors – with paid-for access to analytical case studies on Asian businesses. This content would support students’ classroom learning and research projects, as well as help education professionals to set academic assignments and provoke informed discussions between peers.
The vast majority of existing products of this nature were published in English and focussed on American and European audiences, meaning there was little to no presence of a similar product specifically focused on an Asian market. With Nikkei, Inc’s credibility for high-quality business news, its respected brand reputation and access to an extensive range of existing business-centred content from its various publications, the ability to develop such a digital platform for an Asian audience was highly feasible.
Nikkei Business Lab Asia Ltd is a subsidiary of Nikkei, Inc based in Thailand who are tasked with finding and developing new revenue streams for the company. With ddx having a reputation for effectively implementing digital solutions for clients, its expertise in user experience, as well as staff with previous experience of working with clients in the education sector, Nikkei Business Labs Asia Ltd sought ddx’s collaboration in developing this new product.
Together they aimed to launch a user-focused digital platform aimed at revolutionising the learning experience and outcomes for students, and the teaching experience and practices for academics. The platform would eventually become known as Nikkei BizRuptors: “a space to explore the stories of those who have dared to do things differently and innovate new possibilities. The movers and shakers. Business disruptors, BizRuptors.”
Lean UX Workshops
ddx proposed a Lean UX Workshop as the first step in identifying the key foundations needed to build a prototype for the product using agile methodologies. This was completed over four online workshops, followed by offline sessions and feedback meetings.
During the course of the workshops, important information was garnered regarding the business model, its users, the processes that would be involved, the industry that the client operates in, and the competitive advantage that the product had the capacity to develop through its unique offering – enhanced with innovative digital technology and a focus on UX.
A Lean UX Canvas was introduced as the tool to start and enable user-centric conversations about the project. As part of the workshop, a number of problems were identified for the business model that needed to be resolved in order for the platform to be successful. These were:
- Lack of accessible Asian-focused business case studies that students and academics.
- Traditional case studies are in PDF formats that are not interactive and engaging.
- Multiple avenues to source and find content – can be onerous and time consuming.
- Professors want to teach with digital aids that are not widely or easily available.
- Traditional case studies are considered to be boring by students and academics.
- With busy teaching and work schedules, it can be difficult for professors to source and/or publish qualified case studies. It also applies to students’ learning experience.
Having identified these core business problems, the ddx team worked through the remaining aspects of the Lean UX Canvas during the course of the workshop to identify solutions that could be implemented.
The productive discussions and research and insights from the Nikkei Business Labs Asia Ltd team were useful in developing a comprehensive overall picture of how to provide the right solutions to the identified business problems. Feedback from the client on wireframing was very positive as it made the ideas and the future product more tangible.
The process of identifying users and developing personas also added value to the workshop as it brought to life the typical user of the product and allowed for more focus on what should be done to solve real problems and add value to users.
A Prototype for Problem Solving
With the project having gained direction and scope through the Lean UX Workshop, the challenge facing ddx during the build stage was attempting to facilitate the client’s extensive list of requirements for the platform and identifying the key features needed for launch.
From the outset of the build phase, ddx and Nikkei Business Labs Asia Ltd collaborated to develop a number of key customer journeys and simple clickthrough prototypes, which were shared with key audience members. Based on feedback, a number of changes were implemented to the product.
The prototyping and early user testing uncovered several false assumptions, particularly around how users would pay to access the platform. This perfectly highlighted the benefits of the prototype and user testing phase as it allowed ddx to make the necessary changes without having to build the entire platform before discovering this critical information.
Another key aspect of the product’s functionality was the need for it to be self-managed by the Nikkei Business Labs Asia Ltd team, who would take full ownership of the platform soon after its launch. This meant all content within the platform had to be designed to allow it to be maintained by the client.
Throughout the build phase, ddx used traditional sprint-based methods in their approach. The client was involved in each stage of the planning process to ensure they understood what could be achieved within scope of both time and budget in order to meet the proposed release date.
Once the build was complete and all required user functionality had been implemented, the completed prototype for the Nikkei BizRuptors platform was handed over to the client for a soft launch. This soft launch saw the product sent for use by professors from various universities who were well known to the client to garner their initial feedback.
Results
Having been required to design and develop the product up to MVP stage at the time of launch, ddx successfully delivered the initial Nikkei BizRuptors platform within budget before handing over management and further development of the product to the client.
At the time of launch, the platform had the ability to upload content and sell case studies to users, and provided various user journey and functionality options based on the requirements of the user. Initially containing approximately 20 news articles and case studies, the platform has since continued to evolve and expand, and it now contains more than 120 articles.
In line with their remit, ddx delivered a fully-functioning platform that met the requirements set by Nikkei Business Labs Asia Ltd, and at the time of the product’s handover, provided the client with the tools to continue to operate and maintain the platform successfully in the future.
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