Voice and tone benchmarking
My Role: Vision driver, research lead, coach, mentor
Drove vision to compare current voice and tone to one that we would like to align to so the we could measure the content experience
What instigated the project?
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) was undergoing an identify transformation. I was leading a team of graphic and UX designers, writers, and editors through a visual brand update. The organization was 16 years old and originally funded by a grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. It grew from a few health researchers to a 500+ person nonprofit running on multiple grants trying to be seen as a global leaders in providing health trends and forecasting.
As part of the brand change, I wanted to take the opportunity to evaluate the current digital voice and tone to see if it needed an update as well.
What principles guided the work?
I hired a vendor to do the initial legwork of interviewing senior leadership and summarizing findings. The vendor used the findings to start their initial visual exploration. I used the findings to summarize principles to guide brand research and a voice and tone study.
Independent: We focus on science and avoid politics.
Data-rigorous: Science and accuracy are our life’s blood.
Inclusive: We value the representation of diverse identities in our research and among our employees. We strive to center the voices of groups that have been historically marginalized.
Transparent: Science is a team sport. We invite collaboration and share our data, methods, and code as a public good.
What were the research goals?
I facilitated a workshop between colleagues to work through our learning goals before talking to a vendor.
What is our current organizational brand voice and tone?
Does our brand personality differ across channels?
Does our voice and tone align with our organizational principles?
Which aspects of our current voice & tone work well and which don’t?
Which ones align with the brand personality we want to be in the future?
Collaboration in FigJam with a product manager and a senior content manager
Study Method
In this quantitative study, participants were exposed to 6 pieces of content and were asked to evaluate each piece’s tone of voice, one at a time.
Each content piece was converted to plain text in order to remove distractions and reduce bias.
For each piece of content, participants were asked to (1) summarize the information in their own words in order to validate that they indeed read the content, (2) rate four dimensions of tone along a semantic differential scale, and (3) select the tone descriptor that best describes what they’ve read and explain their reasoning for doing so.
Study Participants
IHME has a global audience so we wanted the study to reflect that as well. We also had a goal to target low and middle income countries.
Sample Size: 122 participants
Device: Desktop
Countries: Nigeria: 23, India: 24, Indonesia: 24, USA: 25, United Kingdom: 25
Gender: 61% women, 39% men
Voice and tone workshop across divisions
While the study was running with our vendor, I coached the content manager to facilitate a voice and tone workshop so that we would understand what a desirable voice and tone perception would be based on our brand work. Members were invited from the following teams: Social media, Global engagement and outreach, and Content and digital design.
While the content manager facilitated, I had her research how to run this workshop and sent her resources from well known UX writers and content strategists.
We reviewed our brand characteristics, and completed individual and group exercises based on what we all believed our brand should be evolving into the future.
Outcomes
The benchmarking study results showed us that we weren’t currently far off from our aspirational brand. IHME was perceived as serious and formal, though not particularly innovative. We want to change that aspect moving forward.
I reviewed the outcomes with our senior leadership and division and we decided to document our desired voice in tone in a new content style guide.
Everyone agreed to do a follow-up study in 6 months to see if we were staying true to our new brand principles and improving as being seen as innovative.
We also had additional brand perception metrics to review from feedback on the visual design, which had similar results. IHME was seen as scientific and rigorous, though not transparent or inclusive. Based on these results, we had metrics to track and achieve for the coming year.
