A Usability Evaluation of the Financial Times Integrated Publishing System

The Financial Times (FT) is one of the world’s leading financial publications and its reporting is often regarded as the definitive version of events.  It is published in a variety of editions in the UK, Europe and Worldwide and on its website.

The FT has recently implemented a new publishing system (Méthode) that integrates writing, page layout and web publishing into a single package.  This development has replaced the FT's previous newspaper and web publishing systems with a single system which supports all the editions and channels.

System Concepts conducted a series of expert usability reviews to support the Méthode design team at appropriate stages throughout the 18 months of development.  The key users of the system had been identified as:

• writers
• sub-editors
• page layout specialists.

Each review addressed a different part of the system and involved a usability consultant working with the user experts in the development team to perform the major tasks for each key user.

The reviews identified a number of software ergonomics issues and suggested more usable alternatives. Later reviews showed the issues had been addressed which improved the usability of Méthode and helped produce a powerful and effective publishing tool.