VIA Interaction

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

New York Times redesigns

The New York Times has redesigned its Web site, and it takes some getting used to.

When I was in the newspaper business, it was commonly understood that any redesign would be unpopular when it was released. People like the familiarity of their newspaper, and changes are greeted skeptically.

There is a little of that going on with the New York Times redesign, certainly. But there are some other things that I think need to be reconsidered:

• 1024x768 layout. Sure, most people are at least at that screen size. I've got a tiny laptop, though (an IBM ThinkPad x41 Tablet), and I like to use the bookmarks sidebar in Firefox. Even full-screen, that makes left-to-right scrolling a requirement in the new Times design.
• Blue headlines. Blue is the universal langauge for hyperlink, but has been often pointed out, it is not a great screen color Moeover, with the increased density of the information in the page, it makes the page less scannable. In this case, a black headline would create a clearer distinction between stories.
• Bullet lists are crammed. The Times would do well to add a little linespacing after each bullet item in the lists at the bottom of the page. Scannability problems.

10:40 p.m. update: The Times changed the look of the bullet lists today (April 5) by adding some linespacing and reverse indenting bullets.

• Tools. The Times is making it easier to find their "most e-mailed" stories, which, when it was introduced, was a very cool way to find out what was the most interesting thing on the site. I think the Washington Post's version is better, though: They have a list of the "most viewed" stories in the section and on the site.

Take a look: The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia

posted by Tim Beidel at 4/05/2006 11:37:00 AM

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