Prioritizing Content for DNA Communities
How I used forced-ranking research to help Ancestry decide where to invest in new expert-written content.
Ancestry was exploring new content for DNA Communities, which helps people learn more about the places and populations connected to their DNA results.
There were many potential topics we could develop, but creating the content required contracting with subject-matter experts. We needed a way to determine which topics users were most interested in before deciding where to invest those resources.
The research needed to force a choice
A simple interest rating wouldn't necessarily give the team the prioritization it needed. If participants rated many topics as interesting, we'd still be left deciding which ones should come first.
Instead, I designed a forced-ranking exercise.
Participants reviewed potential content across several topic categories and selected their top three categories and top three individual topics. Requiring people to make tradeoffs gave us a clearer signal about relative interest than asking them to evaluate each topic independently.
The results gave the team a clear priority
I compiled the selections across participants to compare interest in the different categories and topics.
The team used those results to decide which categories and topics to commission first.