Beyond the Census Record

Experience Opportunities Across FH

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Table of Contents

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1. The Experience Opportunities Beyond Major Indexed Fields

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• Horizontal Storytelling, Optimization and Integration
1. Integration of Record Tour into StoryScout*
2. Record Tour: How to Read a Census*
3. Contextual Frameworks*
4. Stories about 1950: Family Narratives
5. Integration across Family History
6. Optimize collections landing pages to improve experience, expand SEO
7. Photolines integration

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• Collaborations for Additional Content
• We Remember for UGC
• NARA Government Analysis as source of statistical elements for storytelling
• Partnership/Revenue share with Spotify

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Note: while these slides are in reference to 1950, the work is intended to serve as scalable frameworks for other collections as well.

The Experience Opportunities Beyond Major Indexed Fields

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First, A Guiding Principle: Work Serves Beyond 1950 Census

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Guidance from Family History leadership:

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• We are building products, features and experiences to serve more than 1950 US Census
• Upgrades to census record experience serves all census records
• Integrations lift experience across Family History, not just within a census record, Record Tour or single StoryScout

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• We build with an eye toward 1950 release; however, we go live when the functionality is available -- even if it is before April, 2022.
• In this deck, features/products slated for 1950 P&T roadmap are marked with *

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That Said, We Have Opportunities Beyond the Record

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There are opportunities to optimize aspects of the census -- combined with related Ancestry content and our current service tools -- to create experiences that can be consumed in the early days of the collection’s release, as marketing features, and re-imagined as census fields are indexed.

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We can also serve customers with a collection of smaller, flexible experiences that can be deployed closer to 1950 public release, even if not directly tied to 1950. These experiences can evergreened and reused within Family History products, as well as potentially repurposed for marketing/customer acquisition purposes.

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Horizontal Storytelling, Optimization and Integration

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Horizontal Storytelling*

Integration of Record Tour + StoryScout

StoryScout + Record Tour to bring together 1930 and 1940 censuses. Can link into or link from 1950 as April 2022 release; Can replace with a 1940-1950 story when an indexed 1950 EN becomes available.

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Horizontal Storytelling*

Record Tour: How to Read a Census

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An instructional record tour that can be used both in product and as a learning hub/marketing feature. It explains:

• How to read a census
• How to use it
• Putting in context what customers can see now vs future
• Can include content from any enumeration work
• Content can be separated and re-used as help content for personalized census experiences

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Horizontal Storytelling*

Understanding Enumeration Districts

We have data showing need by customers to understand both how enumeration districts work as well as how to understand changes over time

• Enumeration Districts can help bring Ancestry neighborhood/district-like insights contextually to customers without making inferences that can be potentially risky (sensitivity/legal).
• This is already being explored for the 1940 record tour experience

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• Casual customers don’t understand how to find their enumeration number and Ancestry can help demystify that for them to help them find the households they want more quickly when 1950 launches.

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• Enumeration insights can aid contextual experiences about historically genealogically-dense terminology that can help scaffold casual customers to make more discoveries when 1950 is initially launched
• example: record tour paradigm but for a blank 1950 document

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Horizontal Storytelling*

Contextual Frameworks

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Frameworks of context across Family History to:

• Extend experience within and beyond the record

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• Break from siloed experiences to extend across Family History

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• Provide additional context as fields within a record are indexed in the future

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Horizontal Storytelling

Family Narratives

Applying data + related collections to relational roles in a household. With a service like StoryScout or Record Tour, these vignettes can be woven into a 1950 family lifestyle narrative:

• Father/Male: Rent/Own + field TBD + WWII Draft card
• Mother/Female: Home safety/comfort= appliances y/n + Sears Catalog
• High Schooler: Yearbook + Radio + Music
• Younger school aged children: Grouped + y/n school + radio
• Infant: Infant Census Story (identical for all infants)
• Extended family member: TBD
• Lodger: TBD
• Hired help: TBD

At launch, a historical version is used as baseline; when an EN is fully indexed, a contextual version becomes available.

Example of a family lifestyle narrative

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Placements and Integrations

Optimization: Consolidation of Collections Landing Page + Content Landing Page

Optimizing the 1950 Collections landing page will by integrating a content landing page experience accomplishes multiple goals:

• A more realized experience for collections (Redwood, SEO, optimized content, a place for interim/general 1950 content to live)
• Maximizes constrained resources (eliminates duplicate efforts):

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Placements and Integrations

LIHP: Regularly updated component based on 1950 census engagement

We can create an editorial calendar to consistently show 1950 related content when:

• 1950 is released
• When contextualized content is available

After the user has engaged with first two bullets, additional engagement opportunities that can be added to a person page life story/facts:

• Life stories that can be viewed, shared and added to person page (see previous slides)
• Secondary content (enumeration, etc)
• NCOM content
• Life events related to a person in the 1950 census (marriage or obit; new content as available)
• Tying contextual information from census like income to elements in NCOM (ads, etc)
• Related collections that have not been viewed/accepted (yearbook, Sears catalog, etc)
• 3rd party content (eg 1950 music playlist, etc.)
• Take a second look: invitation to engage with the census again
• Build your family’s 1950 story (invite family to contribute memories)

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Placements and Integrations

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Person Page: Using additional features to flesh out stories

All features and stories should have the capability to be added to a person page to tell a more complete 1950 story:

• Contextual stories
• Related collections and content
• 3rd party content (NYTimes partnership, music, etc)

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Placements and Integrations

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Photolines

Complete the integration beyond native into family history spaces:

• Search
• Person Page?

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Collaborations for Additional Content

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We Remember for UGC & Collaboration

We Remember’s export capabilities has the potential for integration across Family History. This can help solve for UGC and collaboration requests for 1950 in lieu of UGC team resources.

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We Remember API

• Ability to upload and save content, images and audio/video would address UGC needs at these engagement points:
• Person Page (engage and destination for saved content)
• Records & Collections
• Within StoryScout
• We Remember’s ability to invite others to add content or comment addresses:
• Collaboration
• Social sharing

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Government Stats for Horizontal Storytelling

Optimize lifestyle questions to help tell stories

Each census contains questions aimed at understanding the states and quality of American life:

• indoor/outdoor plumbing; hot/cold water
• Appliances
• Lifestyle questions

We can pair an AI-rendered result with data such as government analysis already available to us, related collections like Sears Catalog and other media types.

This content can be used as:

• Prompts to engage, ask users to validate their family’s experience (“Was your family one of the 8% that owned a TV?”)
• Content elements to add to person page
• Content elements to build family stories

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Government Stats for Horizontal Storytelling

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In addition to related collections, US government statistical analysis can provide additional meaning to a census’ indexed fields as well as meaning to fields we don’t index

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US Government Analysis

Hundreds of pages of free, public US government analyses of 1950. Currently, Legal is looking a preliminary usage opportunities:

• Optimal: Ingest and store copies of the documents; create NLP/AI ability to highlight and surface snippets to user
• Doable: Curated list of 100-200 facts sourced from documents; manually uploaded, stored and attributed
• Not advised: External linking to government sites

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Spotify Partnership

In addition to related collections, we are exploring two external sources to provide additional meaning to 1950 and indexed fields:

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Spotify Partnership

Ancestry has an existing relationship with Spotify that we may be able to extend into lifestyle content for 1950

• StoryScout can soon have ability to accommodate audio content, including a Spotify API, pending need and prioritization
• Marketing able to use in campaigns, including our social & landing pages as well as targeted 1950 ad placement on Spotify

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1950 Playlist 2.5 hours

Appendix

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Workshops and Research

• 1950 ideation workshops
• Two workshops, Summer 2020
• E20 survey
• 40 (confirm) people, August 2020
• 1950 Stories | User testing
• Survey of interest of life stories (teen, baby, homemaker, etc), February 2021
• Collecting 1950 Memories | User testing
• Survey of people’s memories and keepsakes from them or their family in 1950, March 2021
• Reviewing 120+ research pieces to build data for Curious use cases (validate, avoid concept testing), In progress

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UXR

UXR

UXR

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1950 Ideation Workshop | Lifestyle

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Who Do Watch Parties | Experience Breakdown

UX hosted WDYTYA watch parties in March 2021 to identify storytelling elements that may be productized in the Family History space.

Miro board: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lR1A1aM=/

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https://www.census.gov/prod/2000pubs/cff-2.pdf