Designs MSNBC.com left behind
Cory Bergman November 12th, 2007
MSNBC’s Ashley Wells is brave enough to post some of the designs his team tested over the last year. And some of them are, well, avant guard. Like this one:
Wells says, “Don’t tell our editors, but I really just designed this one to scare them.” If you look carefully under the logo, the slogan says “Now with more cowbell.”
3 Comments Add your own
1. Don Day | November 12th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Wow. That is brave… you run the risk of people going “I like design X better.” Which is how I feel right now (but not about the cowbell design).
2. Dave | November 13th, 2007 at 7:20 am
Yea… pretty risky.
However, I wonder if the person posting these really likes ‘design x’ better than the current one.
I like some of the “sample platter” designs better myself. They seem cleaner and less cluttered.
3. Ashley Wells | November 13th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Don: Which of those others would you rather have? Why? It’s that kind of discussion I was hoping the Alpha Channel post would generate.
Dave: The ’sample platter’ designs didn’t play well with user groups. Groups aren’t the end all, but they do help with direction at a high level if done well. And on that point, it really doesn’t matter which designs I personally prefer. It’s not my website. I like whatever I think will be most effective for our users and advances our journalism. I’m confident the final msnbc.com homepage design does that. It’s a clean vision with little to no compromises, which is exceedingly rare in redesigns. But if usage proves us wrong, we’re standing by to make changes. With any luck, this is our last major redesign. I prefer quickly and constantly evolving in small ways that add up to big differences over time.
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