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Design, develop, test. Design, develop, test. Repeat.
Our IT teams spend much of their time talking with clients about new ideas and improving user experience. As such, product development is a huge part of their role.
#WorldProductDay which spans 43 countries and incorporates events in 90 cities, grew out of a Product Tank initiative founded and developed 8 years ago in London by Mind the Product.
WPD is a simple concept that aims to ‘Bring together Product Managers from around the world to raise awareness of, and the appreciation for, the craft of product management.’
Which prompts the question, why do we need a World Product Day? The answer to which, is the fourth industrial revolution.
The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to drive production which led to greater levels of urbanisation. The Second, much to the delight of Adam Smith, used electricity to create mass production. The Third used electronics and IT to automate production and popularise personal computing. And now, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is radically expanding on the Third, to power the digital revolution that has been accelerating over the last decade.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has created a fusion of technology that has crossed the physical and digital divide to drive the commercialisation of personalisation at scale, VR, AR, AI and, in context, positioned product management at the heart of this fourth wave or industrialisation.
So, there you have it and let us be one of the first to wish you a Happy World Product Day.
Richard Spencer, Chief Product Officer at Isentia
Loren is an experienced marketing professional who translates data and insights using Isentia solutions into trends and research, bringing clients closer to the benefits of audience intelligence. Loren thrives on introducing the groundbreaking ways in which data and insights can help a brand or organisation, enabling them to exceed their strategic objectives and goals.
Our IT teams spend much of their time talking with clients about new ideas and improving user experience. As such, product development is a huge part of their role.
Computer science is as much art as it is science. With that in mind, at Isentia, we try to keep things as simple as possible. We increase our developers’ productivity by training them to avoid code complexity, write simple code and follow good software engineering practices when implementing a solution to a problem.
The goal is to make Mediaportal, our blue ribbon platform, easy to use for both the everyday user and those who log in more sporadically.
After extensive research we uncovered a few home truths:
The Architecture of Information in Mediaportal needed improvement: Users felt that jumping from one important feature to another took too many steps. At the same time, visual complexity made the menu hard to scan.
More intuitive design was required: Certain core functionalities were not prominent, with some users struggling to navigate to popular tabs.
Mediaportal needed a more responsive design: Client feedback from users logging on via lesser-known browsers or smartphones showed that not all Mediaportal functions were easy to navigate. We know how important it is for clients to access Mediaportal throughout the day across multiple devices. As such, our technology requires constant review to ensure Mediaportal remains a platform that delivers insights and news anywhere, anytime.
As such Mediaportal has undergone an overhaul.
At the core of this project, as always, were the clients. We worked closely with more than 35 of them, collecting hours and hours of interviews and testing dozens of different design variations. We listened carefully to their feedback and ensured it was incorporated into every design. The end result? Our teams designed a platform that is intuitive and can be used to its full potential by everyone – from first-time users to our most regular visitors.
Enterprise applications bring a whole domain of complexities when compared to consumer apps, as they usually involve connecting to one or more legacy systems and include a much greater scope. However, complexity does not mean we have to settle for less in design. Instead, a well-designed enterprise application harnesses a greater positive impact for the business.
For more information on our Mediaportal platform and the service we deliver, visit our services page and connect with us.
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24 October 2018
Media intelligence and insights leader, Isentia (ASX:ISD) opens its doors to a newly refurbished Melbourne office and shares a sneak peak into its Sydney HQ designed for a new and tech savvy workforce.
Located on Cleveland Street in Surry Hills, the light-filled Sydney HQ enjoys uninterrupted views of Sydney city and Prince Alfred Park.
Conveniently located, just a few minutes’ walk from Central Train Station, the office is well connected to bus routes and the soon to be completed light rail. Staff also benefit from newly renovated end-of-trip facilities such as showers, lockers and bicycle parking.
The vibrant area of Surry Hills is home to a range of cafes and restaurants, gyms, yoga studios and (year-round heated) Prince Alfred Park Pool, with open grass area for unwinding or enjoying a quick break outdoors.
Isentia HQ benefits from an airy and open plan design creating a sense of community. A newly renovated, open plan kitchen and common area isoften used for Friday drinks, birthday celebrations and friendly (competitive) table tennis matches. Breakout areas, huddle spots, and quiet rooms are available in addition to meeting rooms, making a range of work activity possible – with an innovation lab coming soon!
The office renovations form part of Isentia’s transformation as a tech company. Supporting this are a wide range of career opportunities from CX, product design and development, infrastructure and solutions development to media analysts.
Last week the team presented a completely redesigned Melbourne office, now housing more than 70 desks for local analysts, sales, client service and editorial team members as well as new glass offices and meeting spaces that encourage natural light to flow to every corner.
While Sydney will remain Isentia's headquarters, the decision to update the Melbourne office was an easy one says John Bissinella, Head of Client Solutions. "It was important we update the look and feel of our Melbourne office to keep pace with the speed and innovation of our tech. We deliver Australia’s fastest, most comprehensive and reliable media monitoring, intelligence and insights service – it was time for our workspace to be reflective of this.”
We’re excited to share this space with our valued clients who value the rigour with which our insights and intelligence services are delivered, and appreciate hearing from the people who work to deliver their service 365 days of the year.
With a new kitchen and breakout spaces, renovated bathrooms (including showers and change facilities for commuters), as well as improved lighting, flooring and desk layouts, the office promotes greater collaboration between teams and encourages a more flexible work environment.
Isentia (ASX:ISD) opens its doors to a newly refurbished Melbourne office and shares a sneak peak into its Sydney HQ designed for a new and tech savvy workforce.
Media = news coverage. Social = all public posts across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Forums - everyone posting, not just media outlets.
Candidates and sitting MPs from the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori attended a meeting with Mongrel Mob members at a gang address. When photographs from the meeting were shared on social media, the response from commentators and rival parties was swift and largely critical.
This was not the week's highest-volume story, accounting for only 112 of 4,479 media items (2.5%, after filtering out unrelated international content) and 116 of 13,938 unique social posts (0.8%, after collapsing retweet/repost duplicates down to one count per message), well below the volume generated by ongoing leaders' debate coverage, which totalled 1,125 media items. Two independent methods nonetheless support treating it as a genuine, separable story: an exact keyword count aligns closely with an unsupervised clustering analysis of the entire media population, which identified it as a distinct 47-item cluster - smaller than general campaign coverage and several specific policy announcements, but clearly distinguishable from them. What sets the story apart is the intensity of the reaction rather than its scale: 72% of social commentary on the topic was negative, the most one-sided sentiment recorded for any subject this week, and the average post attracted roughly 5.7 times the typical level of engagement. Taken together, these figures point to a genuine public reaction concentrated on social platforms, and the episode provides National and ACT with a law-and-order narrative that may continue into coming weeks. It has not been linked to a tracked party policy below, as it reflects a matter of conduct rather than a policy position.
4,479 media items · 13,938 social items · share of each channel's own conversation, so the two bars are directly comparable
"Social" is all public posts across X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Forums - not just media organisations' own accounts.
The most active commentary this week came from Sean Plunket, the Chris Chang and Tova O'Brien pairing, and John MacDonald.
By follower reach, the most prominent social accounts posting about the election this week were major outlets' own accounts - the New Zealand Herald, 1News, RNZ, Stuff and Radio Tarana - alongside the official Labour Party account. Individual leaders' personal accounts posted actively but with smaller followings than these outlet and party accounts.
The Greens continue to receive disproportionately greater attention on social media relative to traditional news coverage, accounting for 20.4% of social party conversation compared with 14.1% in media coverage - roughly 1.4 times the media share.
Law and order shows a similarly pronounced gap between channels this week, accounting for 10.6% of social conversation compared with 5.3% in the news. This is consistent with the public reaction to the Mongrel Mob meeting, which appears to have generated considerably sharper engagement on social platforms than mainstream coverage volume alone would suggest.
Shown for the four largest parliamentary parties (National, Labour, Greens, NZ First); ACT, Te Pāti Māori and TOP are tracked elsewhere in this report but not included in this chart, so these shares sum to 100% of the four shown, not of all tracked parties. Share of conversation measures attention and mentions only - it is not polling and should not be read as an indication of electoral success.
Winston Peters leads the rankings this week, a shift driven primarily by a widely circulated moment in the minor-party leaders' debate in which he described diversity as "a weakness rather than a strength" while delivering a pointed critique of the left-leaning bloc. Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins follow closely behind as the campaign moves into its final weeks, while David Seymour and Chloe Swarbrick complete the top five, each drawing attention largely through their parties' own policy announcements this week.
Each major party's top-ranked issues this week, by real topic volume in their social conversation (after excluding other parties' names, individual people, and procedural or horse-race chatter), with how that conversation leaned
Volume and sentiment above are based on social media data only.
If you want to find out more about how Isentia can help you understand the NZ media landscape, please reach out to us here.
" ["post_title"]=> string(83) "NZ Election 2026: Mongrel Mob Controversy, Fiscal Policy and Greens on social media" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(156) "Explore New Zealand’s 2026 election conversation, from the Mongrel Mob meeting controversy and law and order to reactions to Labour’s capital gains tax." ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(49) "nz-election-2026-mongrel-mob-fiscal-policy-greens" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2026-10-19 01:20:22" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2026-10-19 01:20:22" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(32) "https://www.isentia.com/?p=50464" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" }Explore New Zealand’s 2026 election conversation, from the Mongrel Mob meeting controversy and law and order to reactions to Labour’s capital gains tax.
A weekly tracker tracing the stories, figures and policies driving media and social coverage in the 2026 New Zealand General Election across Online News, TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Forums. This edition covers conversations and coverage from 1st – 8th October, highlighting what’s shaping the election conversation.
National announced a five-point welfare policy: random drug testing for JobSeeker recipients (with sanctions for repeat failures), reduced payments for long-term beneficiaries, and a doubled stand-down period for repeatedly leaving jobs without good reason. Labour and the Greens called it "punching down" and "cruel"; ACT proposed going even further; Luxon defended it as "fairness" for taxpayers.
The single largest media cluster this week (183 of 600 sampled items) was generic "campaigning intensifies as election day nears" coverage. This welfare policy, while smaller by volume (29 items), is a genuine flashpoint: a specific, controversial announcement that sharply divided every major party and will likely keep generating reaction into next week.
4,360 media items · 17,277 social items · share of each channel's own conversation, so the two bars are directly comparable
The Greens get more than twice the relative attention on social media as in the news. On social, the Greens are 20.8% of party conversation; in the news, they're 10.3%.
Health is a top-four issue on social but not in the news this week - Infrastructure takes its place in media's top four instead. Social conversation is tilting toward the health system while media coverage stays on economy, cost of living and infrastructure announcements.
Share of conversation measures attention and mentions only - it is not polling and should not be read as an indication of electoral success.
Luxon and Hipkins remain close at the top as the campaign enters its final stretch. Peters follows, still driven by coalition speculation. Seymour moves up to fourth on the back of ACT's economic-reform push (including floating a higher superannuation age), overtaking Swarbrick, whose fifth-place mentions continue to track the Greens' polling strength.
Each major party's most prominent specific policy, and how social conversation reacted to it
Volume and sentiment above are based on social media data only.
If you want to find out more about how Isentia can help you understand the NZ media landscape, please reach out to us here.
" ["post_title"]=> string(71) "NZ Election 2026: Welfare, Greens and the policies driving conversation" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(152) "What’s shaping New Zealand’s 2026 election conversation? Explore the key policies, parties and issues driving media and social discussion this week." ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(69) "nz-election-2026-welfare-greens-and-the-policies-driving-conversation" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2026-10-19 07:37:01" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2026-10-19 07:37:01" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(32) "https://www.isentia.com/?p=50341" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" }Get in touch or request a demo.