Back to the drawing board

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Steve McConnell

It’s been a busy month in redesign land, partly because we’ve finally nailed down a workable hosting arrangement for the new NewsCenter, thanks to a three-way partnership with the journalism school and IST. But we’ve also revisited our core design, in response to some complaints that it was too busy and boxy. So now we need your feedback again on some major variations on a new theme.

We’ve removed quite a lot from our last design: colors, boxes, backgrounds, accordions, tabs, content. And we’ve come up with new ways to arrange the remaining content that we hope will make it more accessible and usable to you.

On our new demo page, you’ll find three different treatments of the page banner at the top, and three different designs of the page body below. Use the blue buttons at the top left to switch among the alternatives until you find the combination that you like best. Then email newscenter@berkeley.edu with your answer to these questions:

  1. Which banner is best? (A, B or C)
  2. Which page design is best? (1, 2 or 3)
  3. Why do you like these designs?
  4. What do you dislike about the unchosen alternatives? (And were there elements of these unchosen designs that you DID like?)
  5. How does the best of the new designs compare to our previous design?

Go to the demo page >

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Arriving in Oz: Color joins the design fray

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Steve McConnell

Design A: Click to view

No surveys this time, just a couple more NewsCenter design iterations in search of feedback. You’ll see that these two designs have a lot in common, signaling that we’re closing in on a look and feel we think will serve NewsCenter readers well.

We’ve taken to heart much of the feedback from last month’s interactive demo page. We ditched the hover/mouseover accordion feature that left many of you feeling jumpy, replacing it with clickable +/- buttons that give more control over what expands when. We’ve kept some tabs, but have tried to reduce the overall amount of content on the page, as well as the number of sections that start on a “hidden” layer. We’ve upsized most images and used more of them. And we’re still working on finding the sweet spot for content that is comprehensive without being over-busy.

On the good news/bad news front, we’ve also moved beyond B&W mockups to include our planned color palette. Good news, because that means we’re now soliciting feedback on graphics, colors and other visual elements of the design. Bad news, because adding colors adds to the complexity of prototyping, so the latest mockups are nonfunctional images rather than working HTML demos.

Design B: Click to view

Please have a look at our two latest page designs, and then let us know your thoughts on any or all of the following:

  • Placement and prominence of the various content elements
  • Typography: Legibility, attractiveness
  • Graphic elements
  • Colors
  • Overall page design

If you’re commenting about a specific design element on one page or the other, please make sure to indicate whether you’re referring to Design A or Design B. You can email all comments to newscenter@berkeley.edu.

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The squeeze box and the file tab

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Steve McConnell

Last month’s survey uncovered a clear preference for less busy-ness and wider columns on the NewsCenter, with Option 2 the hands-down favorite. (Here are the three options to refresh your memory.) However, we still need to meet the needs of our many disparate audiences, which means collecting and organizing links to lots of stories from lots of sources. Our dilemma: How to pack all this content into a limited amount of screen real estate without making the NewsCenter unreadably cluttered?

Our latest iteration uses a couple of Web 2.0 techniques — accordions and tabs — in an effort to satisfy both those who want more news and those who want less jumble.  We’re interested in your reaction to these different ways of organizing content; you can explore the demo page to see what we’re up to.

Keep in mind, we’re not looking for feedback on colors (there are hardly any), graphics, or typefaces and sizes (we still have some tweaking to do there). Instead, please pay attention to how the different items and links on the page work, and to what content is where. We’re especially interested in your reaction to the content in the right-hand column(s). Once you’ve explored the demo page, click the link at the top or bottom of it to take another brief survey.

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Boxes, boxes everywhere

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Steve McConnell

We’ve been working for the past month+ on several NewsCenter design iterations that try to find the best placement for all the news content our readers tell us they want. Just like when you move into a new house, this involves lots of arranging and rearranging of boxes and furniture, trying to come up with a flow of content that makes sense both for the readers and for the communicators. And in order to nail down the reader part of that equation, we need you, our readers, to tell us what works for you. So, it’s back to Survey Gizmo for a quick (2 questions!) survey that will show you several of the content configurations we’ve been working on, and let you tell us what works for you and what doesn’t.

This is also your chance to get more involved in our feedback and user testing process for the new NewsCenter. Fill out the optional contact info boxes on the survey form, and we’ll add you to the roster of people we’ll be relying on for more comprehensive feedback, live testing and brainstorming.

You can take the survey here.

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Shifting gears

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Steve McConnell

We’ve now largely completed the research phase of the NewsCenter redesign project; thanks for all your feedback about how you consume news and what you like and dislike about the way we provide it. Now we’re beginning to use the results of that research to drive the design and construction of the next NewsCenter.

We’ve boiled down the survey and poll and peer-review results to identify the content modules that are most important to include in the site, and begun to sketch out the relative hierarchy and relationships of those modules. Our designers are beginning to sketch out options for assembling those elements on a web page. More meetings and brainstorming sessions will refine those ideas as we head toward a working model of the new site. We’ll share some of those ideas as work progresses.

We’re also moving — slowly — toward getting a working installation of WordPress on which to test out some of our design ideas. We’ve opted to host the install on a shared machine in IST’s Data Center — not an easy nor an inexpensive decision, but one that we hope will give us the flexibility, support and reliability we need.

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Likes and dislikes

Posted on April 23, 2010 by Steve McConnell

Wrapping up our review of audience feedback, let’s take a look at answers to the open-ended “likes and dislikes” section of the NewsCenter reader survey.

Gratifyingly, our readers found a lot more to compliment than to criticize on the current NewsCenter. Drawing the most praise were the comprehensiveness of coverage, the quality and timeliness of stories, and our focus on news of importance to campus. Quite a few felt we did a good job of covering research discoveries (though an almost equal number thought we should do even more research stories). And a handful had praise for our stories about people, our coverage of employee-focused news, and our compilations of press clippings.

Far and away the biggest criticism centered on the crowded, busy, hard-to-scan design of the NewsCenter, which is a major focus of this whole redesign effort. (To be fair, about half as many people cited the page design or organization as something they liked, placing it fifth on the list of strengths.)

Many respondents also faulted what they saw as bias or spin in our coverage, particularly of campus issues like the budget or the stadium project. Perhaps this criticism would have been less pronounced if we hadn’t been conducting the survey at such a contentious, protest-marching, building-occupying time. Then again, this is Berkeley — when isn’t it a contentious time? This also highlights the sometimes uneasy nature of our dual role: the NewsCenter chronicles the news of UC Berkeley, but it is also a primary communications channel for the campus administration.

Several people complained about our news search, calling for a tool that delivers better results and more advanced capabilities. This is something we’ll be working on with the redesign, but probably won’t be able to implement immediately, because until we can get all of our archival stories integrated into our new database-powered publishing system, it would be very challenging (and of only limited usefulness) to build a custom tool to search through both.

A handful of people also complained about areas that in general drew praise, faulting the timeliness or depth of our coverage. And a couple of infrequent readers complained that the volume of news meant some stories were pushed off the NewsCenter before they had a chance to see them.

When we asked what people wanted to see more of, research news topped the list (and will get a more prominent presence on the new NewsCenter). Other top desires were faculty and staff news, multimedia offerings, student news, departmental news, and a broader diversity of opinion.

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