Learning from recent redesigns
Steve Safran May 21st, 2007
Good article at E&P about three recent redesigns at newspaper sites and what the people at those sites learned from the process. E&P talked with the editors of USATODAY.com, latimes.com and washingtonpost.com. The editors’ insights into the redesign process is very interesting. One observation echoes what Cory often points out:
One theme that emerged was that redesigning their site was an ongoing process that relies more and more on taking readers’ opinions into effect and making the process more of a conversation than ever before. Still, one editor admitted, half of the reader feedback was initially negative.
It’s the web, and you will always hear negative feedback more than you’ll hear positive feedback. That’s OK. You get more phone calls from crabby viewers than you do from happy viewers. There are great lessons to be learned from the newspapers - they understand page layout.
2 Comments Add your own
1. Rick Friedman | May 21st, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Like all generalities, the belief that newspapers understand page layout only goes so far. The NYTimes and WashPost do get it.
But the LA Times web site is a disaster and they keep making it worse.
2. warren reid | May 22nd, 2007 at 6:39 am
Understanding page layout is great, but not the same online…
I have been involved in DOZENS of redesigns of newspaper (and TV) websites and invariably the new site ends up PRINTED OUT and then passed around to the higher ups.
The problem is that everyone then looks at it as one complete page (like a newspaper) and seeks to rearrange it based on looking at the whole thing at ONCE.
The problem is that NO ONE will ever see it the page that way (unless they print it out — and how often does that happen)
Anyway, really, really wrong-headed moves have been made based on this “doing page layout” like a newspaper model..
I haven’t read this E&P article yet about “the big boys” and their redesigns, but I have been through enough to know (at similar sized papers and news organizations) that we’re probably not getting the real truth either…
Invariably, redesigns are always subject to the whims of some muckety-muck who (usually at the last minute to prove how powerful/smart they are) changes something drastically… or, the whole redesign is a an art project for the designer who is trying to land another jobs somewhere (it’s unbelievably stylistic)… or the whole thing ends up being a hodge podge and compromise among between dept. at the organization..
as usual, we are subject to hearing from the same old newspapers that have entire committees and entire staffs of designers to hear how they did it….
meanwhile 95 percent of us have very little in common with these newspapers…
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