Admit it. You saw our
new homepage and it lived up to your wildest fantasies about online news presentation. Me, too. Okay, maybe—maybe—
two,
three people tops will say ‘
what were they thinking?!’ Rest assured we were thinking. For about two years. Here’s how it started.
The gentle evolutionThis is our existing design, just wider. And with a rotating video area in the top right. And collapsible links in the center. And icons. And time stamps. Nothing terribly exciting. User groups liked it. It felt safe. But they didn’t love it. Neither did we.
Culture shockDon’t tell our editors, but I really just designed this one to scare them. Or, ehm, ‘challenge assumptions.’ Did we really need navigation on the left? Why not scroll visual stories sideways? How about we then just list stories? Let readers dial the amount of detail up or down and sort them by importance, number of related videos, user ratings, number of comments, time published, etc? Kinda like news search on steroids.
Nobody ran screaming. They had questions. But good ones. Turns out some of them had even stranger ideas. So we put a more colorful version of the one above in front of user groups with a few more measured options.
Sample platterUser groups can be tough. They debate shades of blue. Ads drive ‘em crazy. But they all agree on one thing: Put the date at the top of the page. Done!
Our first concept was just too complicated. So many options, so little time. The second, with its big rotating top stories, did better. But it didn’t offer enough variety. The last one pushed a video clipping feature at the top—a big ol’ box of video. They weren’t buying it. Turns out news video is often an impulse item.
All these users really wanted from us was simplicity. At-a-glance top stories. Interesting pictures. An easy to find sports section. ‘Tell me what’s important, but give me options to decide on my own.’ Hm. So we don’t have to re-invent ourselves? Like into a
social news site? Or one that
moves instead of scrolls? Just live up to our potential by doing we what we already do, but better? If you say so …
CloserI started this one on a plane with some help from
Curious George sitting next to me. “I don’t like type on photos.” Neither do our photo editors. Let’s start with that. Then add flexible layouts. That way we can re-mix the news as it changes. “And you can skip all of that entertainment fluff,” said George. Whoa,
Hoss. It helps pay the bills. Beside, everyone has different tastes. My wife might put entertainment up high. What if I let her do that and help George pretend he only reads weighty world news? So I sketched out a series of strips. Move buttons. Resize buttons. And headlines bundled with video, multimedia and in-depth topics. Yeah, that might work.
Back to user groups. They studied the new sketch versus the current site. Chins were stroked. Brows furrowed. Silence. They were torn. That’s a good sign, because the site you’ve already got always wins with these people. But not this time. They noticed the top layout powered by actual humans. And the resizeable, moveable strips. And more multimedia. Some—no, most—began to favor the new one. Not quite perfect. Not yet.
OutsourcingIt helps to have design buddies. In this case, we called on
Cameron Moll,
Greg Storey and
JD Hooge to clean up our latest sketch. Solve this problem. Keep that. Make this work. Explore. Each influenced our final design. Along the way, we landed on a humble new lowercase logo and peacock-inspired color spectrum. Professional, but friendly. By now you know that below is where we ended up. Where to next? Let’s discuss …
Ashley Wells is msnbc.com's Creative Director and the design lead of the redesign project
