design

Newspapers can do the web if they want to…

September 10, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’d just finished reading a very good post by my colleague Dave Cushman on the death spiral of newspapers and how to avoid extinction in the online world. I think he’s totally on the money about the two key missed opportunities of the print industry (Missing the quality advantage and missing the R&D advantage), and I agree there’s a slim but closing doorway of opportunity for those brave enough to make the change in the face of falling profits and a global credit crunch.

And in a wonderful bit of coincidence, my RSS feeds pulled in Mindy McAdams moments later, pointing to the winners of the Society of News Design multimedia design competition.

Both of the Gold Awards (See full details of all winners) went to the New York Times for two pieces which really demonstrate the power of online reporting and design, and the advantage a different thought process can bring.

The Crane Collapse in Manhattan shows brilliantly how animation and design can really add to the understanding of an event unfolded, particularly for anyone not familiar with how cranes work. Meanwhile Climbing Kilimanjaro is beautifully simple, using graphics and video for a personal account with a real personal touch.

The lesson isn’t that online journalism has to always include amazing graphics and design (but they help!). The lesson is that a different approach and understanding of the online world leads to a huge amount of success. Something which some of my colleagues have started utilising with great results, and something which is the norm amongst the most popular content sites (newspapers, blogs, and anything else) on the web.

I want great writing. I want great images. I want great video. I want great conversations. But I only want any of those things when they’re relevant to me and the need I have at that moment.

It’s all change on the interweb

August 1, 2008 By Dan Thornton

As always my plans to spend a weekend dedicated to catching up, and even getting ahead, on my blogging etc seem to have been destroyed before Friday is even over, thanks to a horrible noise from the exhaust on my car. I guess that’s what you get for buying something cheap and unusual!

And that clumsily links into the amount of change that’s occurring at the moment to major sites:

New look Facebook has been talked about a lot, and it’s now available. And to be honest, I’m really undecided about the design. It certainly makes it more blog/lifestream than profile page, and it moves applications out of the way, which is good for dealing with application addicts. I’m surprised the advertising is moved out to a column where it is easier to ignore over time, although it did catch my eye the first time it logged.

And there’s new look Delicious. Notice the lack of del.icio.us, as it’s now become www.delicious.com, as they were seeing all sorts of versions of the name being used. A bit of a shame in some ways, as it was one major way to stand out from the crowd. Ma.gnolia might feel a bit silly now! Again the design is cleaner and more modern, and a little lifestream-esque.

And you may have heard the tiniest of whispers around the web that tiny new startup Google is being challenged by a new search engine called Cuil, which claims to index more pages than Google, and return more linked results. One interesting ploy is that they promise information for each search will be anonymous – fine in theory but what will happen in the event of a court case? At the moment, returns a bit flakey, like this one for Dan Thornton. But I’m going to give it some time before making a judgement – I was initially unimpressed with Mahalo, but I’ve grown to like it more and more as time goes by. The best thing about Mahalo’s human-powered search is that the official plugin allows you to display an information box alongside your Google results – meaning it can save you a few clicks if you’re researching something which is covered.

And rounding off a pretty quick skim, is the news for social media marketing, research and business people that Forrester has bought Jupiter Research, which is pretty big news in that space.

Now if I can just stop the exhaust falling off the car, I might be able to catch up with a few things.

If you want a busy homepage, let your users organise it

May 24, 2008 By Dan Thornton

My interest in web design is generally based on usability and accessibility, due to the fact I’m not the most artistic person in the world. I can appreciate attractive designs, but there are far better people than me in the world at creating them.

But something has struck me that I think could be a good rule for web architecture and design, based on my own experience of website redesigns, and trying to cram an awful lot of information onto a homepage in the fear that if it doesn’t appear, no-one will ever see it or find it. So here it is:

If you’re forcing homepage contents on your users keep it simple. If you want it to be cluttered, let your users pick how they organise it – or what it on it.

This is backed up by a few examples. For instance, Google is the oft-quoted archetypal example of a very simple homepage. And one that could make more money for the company if it was covered in banner ads – but that would wreck the essence of it’s success.

Meanwhile users can be overwhelmed by busy homepages – but when was the last time you saw an empty Facebook or Myspace profile, or an empty Netvibes page? Users are happy to have a cluttered page, as long as they’ve been able to create and organise the clutter – just the same as people are happy to work at a cluttered desk if they’ve worked out the clutter themselves.

The recent BBC homepage redesign is a good example of moving in this direction -without hopefully overwhelming too many users. Personally I was disappointed it’s still a walled silo of BBC content only – but it’s a start.