“All celebrities and sports on top”: Prototyping automation for and with editors

Abstract

Designing for interacting with data-driven approaches is a new challenge that PD will have to address. This paper presents a case of prototyping for automation of editors’ manual curating of the online front-page of a large newspaper. The editors make decisions about the presentation and placement of article teasers on the front-page. A new data-driven tool, which automates curating the front-page based on quantitative rankings, is about to be introduced. We have developed a prototype to discuss with the editors how they want support for carrying out their judgment-based decisions for a front-page with a good mix of news topics. We present concepts for discussing how manual tasks that interact with data-driven automation can be designed to be meaningful for people in their work.