Pitchfork launched a redesign last week. The reaction has been mixed. Some have picked on the new, subtler logo, the exclusive use of Helvetica, and the boxiness of the new layout. One person tweeted, “Not wild about the Pitchfork redesign. I give it a 6.8.” (Credit to Billboard for finding that gem.)
Sadly for Pitchfork, a site I visit often, all of these observations have merit, though they miss the real reason why people’s reactions are so meh: from the users standpoint, the new design does not have a clear raison d’etre.
To put it another way, is the content better served by the new design? To determine such a thing is near impossible, although I guess traffic would be a good benchmark. Reactionary blog posts are probably not.
Personally, I would have liked to have seen a more radical approach to structure. Pitchfork, like many sites who are juggling not only a lot of content, but a lot of different kinds of content, has not yet found a elegant way of seamlessly promoting that content. Their approach, which is more functional than it is engaging, is to dump each content type into its own box and then to order the boxes according to editorial priority—reviews, news, new music, video, respectively. They are more interested in making it easy for the user to find the kind of content they’re looking for, rather then telling the user what content they should be looking for. And while the latter may not sound like an appealing idea in the Internet age, it is a fundamental service provided by any editorial product.
So I guess I’m saying the Pitchfork redesign represents a minor cop out. I say minor because this is an incredibly difficult challenge, both from a design and an editorial perspective, and to be fair, the new design is visually appealing. Album art, photography and video are given more “room to breathe.” The site’s navigation is somewhat improved, especially on interior pages, where the site is doing a better job of promoting related content, creating an especially vicious rabbit hole.
Luckily, the content is so good, I’m sure they’re going to have plenty of more time to figure it out.
Following the link trail to Jakob Nielsen
Over the weekend, this pops up in my dashboard:
People Read Web Pages in an F-Shaped Pattern
According to a study by Jakob Nielsen, when we read a page, our eye automatically traces the text in an F-shape. The first paragraph is the one read in its entirety, as we trace the first long line of the ‘F.’ The next paragraph doesn’t fare as well, getting only half that much attention as we track about mid-way through the paragraph, tracing the second short line of the ‘F.’ The last step is simply to skim down the rest of the article, vertically.
Interesting! I’m always interested in reading patterns. (Read: I’m a NERD.) I click through and I go to The Next Web’s post, which is dated yesterday. It references a Jakob Nielsen study about reading patterns. Oh, is there a new one? I click through and land here, a Sept. 2010 entry about the Nielsen study. OK, so it’s a little dusty. No harm. So, I click through again, hoping against hope that I will get to the original study. And I do. Here. It’s from April …. 2006.
Can anyone tell me if our reading habits have changed? Is this original study by Nielsen still relevant? I think so (and his last book on the subject came out more recently, in 2009), but to give it no context in the design landscape 5 years later does readers a disservice. Personally, I am as intrigued by Nielsen as I am in his study. I have visited his UseIt.com in the past and have marveled that a usability guru expert could have a site that looks so … meh.
Does usable have to be so visually unappealing? Does UseIt.com represent some pinnacle of usability that I just don’t get? That’s a new study by Nielsen that I would read.
4 sins of news design reveals biggest sin: web co-opted print content, but not print’s soul
Designer Lauren M. Rabaino (she of the redesigned PressThink.org) expounds on the 4 sins of news design, which are as follows:
1. Clutter.
2. Clutter.
3. Clutter.
4. Clutter.
She has a point, no? If the design of news sites is failing, it is failing precising because it fails to do what the design of their print antecedents did so well: Distill what news is important and create an enjoyable reading experience. It’s bizarre when you think about it. For years, news web sites have happily co-opted their print counterparts content, but have failed to co-opt their soul. From a design standpoint, they clearly need less of the former and more of the latter.
I agree with Rabaino: navigation is too complex, homepages are too tall and content, too often, has to fight with ads and too many related links for your attention. It’s clear that design is being dictated by volume: the volume of content, the volume of traffic and pageviews and most importantly, the volume of ads.
Yet there’s clearly a movement afoot. Call it the iPad-ification of design, the “great magazining” of websites, the Instapapering of content, people want to turn down the volume. They’re looking for clarity. Thankfully designers and information architects are listening. Are publishers?
[Thanks for the link, markarms.]
Hello, skinny columns! Oh, you’re sooo cute, adorable, really, with your bite-size morsels of content and your devil-may-care attitude toward standard ad sizes. Oh, no skyscraper ad is going to fit in between those tiny haunches. I’ve been seeing a lot of you lately, like on the Fast Company’s Co.Design blog and NYMag.com’s Grub Street. What are you? Are you a subnav? No. Not strictly. But you are pleasing to the eye, adding a nice contrast to the typical column proportions found on most blogs. I kind of love you, even though sometimes you’re a little distracting.
Take a look at the NYTimes.com’s beautiful video ghetto.
After watching an excellent animation produced by Zach Wise and Danielle Belopotosky about securities lending, I was looking for context: any and all related content. There was none to be found. Sure, if I wanted to watch another video, perhaps starring Andy Rooney or about the future of television, it was right there, but there was no content related to New Orleans, banking, the economy, nada. NYTimes.com effectively walls off their video content from the rest of their content.
This strategy definitely results in a very tidy, pretty page, but how functional is it?
The problematic assumption here is this: I watched a video, therefore I will be interested in watching other videos. This assumption is sometimes valid, but it wasn’t in my case and I doubt its valid the majority of the time. I watched this video because I was interested in learning about how the city of New Orleans was being gamed by the banking system. Once I was done, I was interested in reading more NYTimes.com content related to that. Why is it nowhere to be found?
I wonder how high the bounce rate is on these video permalinks.
Let’s assume Denton is right and the Web needs to be more like TV. Would the ultimate conclusion of that assumption be less content on the page? I’m not convinced.
It’s interesting. I happen to agree in part with both sentiments: the Web needs to think of itself more like TV and media websites shouldn’t be constrained by a pageview model that forces them to cram 3-4 ads on each page and a flurry of links. But I don’t know if one follows from the other.
Let’s take the TV argument. The web should more like TV in that it should strive to be its own medium. In the same way that TV content evolved away from being stagings of radio plays or shortened movies, the web has to evolve away from being a souped up newspaper or an interactive magazine. Web content has to strive to be different, not to accommodate more pageviews, but to make it more compelling, to make the experience of experiencing content online qualitatively different from that of reading a newspaper or watching a TV show.
For Denton, this means eliminating clutter and making Gawker more “magazine-like,” as Choire would argue. While I agree that these design goals would improve the online reading experience, I don’t think this is how web content becomes more like TV. The only way to do this is to start thinking about the medium and how one creates a compelling reading experience that is impossible to replicate by other sites and unique to medium. While I’m sure Gawker will continue to be successful, I doubt we’re going to see that out of them anytime soon.
Myth #25: Aesthetics are not important if you have good usability
There are usability practitioners who completely dismiss the importance of aesthetics, often citing unattractive but popular websites such as Craigslist.
However, aesthetics do have a function. Attractive things work better. Studies show that emotions play an important role in the users’ experience. If a website has a pleasant visual design, users are more relaxed, tend to find the website more credible and easier to use. A positive first impression — usually based on looks rather than interaction — determines the value of the website on the user’s behalf.
Aesthetics also tell a good many about your brand, product or service. It shows that you care.
This is a well researched and documented post that should need no research or documentation.
Congratulations, M-W.com! You finally got rid of the dull blue border (remember?). The new design is definitely cleaner and easier to read.
One interesting challenge of note: since the content is just definitions, the interior pages tend to be very short. This reduces the amount of space between the 5 ads, the banner ad in the header, the two boxes in the right rail, the skyscraper in the left, and the banner in the footer. This is a pretty standard way sites have of increasing their number of ad impressions. Normally, pages with this many ads are naturally vertical, placing a comfortable space between the ads. This is not the case on M-W.com. I find it distracting. I know they need to make their money to keep the site free, but I wonder why they can’t eliminate at least two on the interior pages, so that the content isn’t overwhelmed by the flashing and the blinking. Isn’t the priority here to service the written word?
There are few more divisive issues in web design than dropdowns. For the haters, dropdowns represent interlopers, little unwanted surprises of information overload. The reaction is instant, visceral, maddening. For the apologist, the argument in favor of dropdowns is always utilitarian. (Nobody ever talks about a beautiful dropdown.) Think of the clutter, they say. Think of how much space on the homepage is saved and how cleaner your nav bar looks. It’s a necessary evil!
Typically, there is no compromise. But that doesn’t mean designers don’t try.
Which brings us to ESPN’s recent facelift in which they’ve gone all in on dropdowns. Frankly, they’re now the king of dropdowns. Their Super Bowl-sized dropdowns, mini-homepages in their own right, put all other dropdowns to shame (except for maybe MSNBC’s drop-ups). They’ve used the added space to spruce up the dropdown, adding photos and a variety of links. It’s now easier on the eyes, even if it is covering half of the homepage. So, have they given you dropdown envy?
From a user perspective, I have to say it works quite smoothly and the appeal is immediate. The user doesn’t have to click through to another page to find out the top stories in the bucket they’re interested in. Also, they’re so large that the user is not tormented by the wayward mouse arrow that closes so many traditional dropdowns before the user is done with them.
The header is all much cleaner. They’ve made room to advertise their local sites and for a thin banner ad (which seem to be growing in popularity). The logo is once again at the top of the page, above the scores. And best of all, bye bye gradient! The nav bar is now a slick black, which just a hint of gradient on the end.
Two radio-related sites, two very different ways to feature a logo.
With its recent redesign, WNYC, the celebrated home of Radiolab (perhaps the best radio show … ever), followed in the footsteps of Newsweek and placed its logo in the top right-hand corner of its website. While in this case, the overall effect is very sharp (the entire redesign is, really), don’t expect too many news sites to follow suit. WNYC.org is unique in that it uses the area in the right rail, above the fold for content, rather than ads. (Directly beneath their logo, WNYC.org features its radio shows.) I doubt too many sites that have ads above the fold in the right rail are going to be rushing to put their logo above them.
This brings me to another radio-related site that I happened upon recently, ThisAmericanLife.org. They have chosen an entirely different approach to their logo, which is quite large and situated beneath the top navigation and in the left rail. What I found interesting is that the logo and the top navigation bar never move, regardless of whether the user has to scroll down. It works.
Both placements have their drawbacks. In case of WNYC.org, perhaps it’s doing too little for their logo, while This American Life could be accused of doing too much. But they both represent bold choices that give their websites a unique flavor.
