McAdams, an independent consultant based in Toronto and Washington, D.C., advises clients on information design. She was part of the small team that created The Washington Post's first online edition in 1994. More about her is available on her home page.
Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of NewsLink.
Back to the Drawing Board
Lesson 3 for Online Publishers: It's Time to Redesign
In the rapidly changing environment of the World Wide Web, new
functionality is introduced several times each year. Design options that
were impossible 18 months ago are now passé. But newspapers seem to
be stuck in their old print habits, looking on design as something that
stays the same, something you finish and then don't think about for a few
years.
Yes, of course, every newspaper on the Web promptly incorporated those
dreadfully annoying animated GIFs. That's not design. That's playing with
new toys.
When a major newspaper first goes on the Web, it often does something
unique in its design. Within a few months, several other newspapers have
copied the innovation. But then everyone just sits back on their heels and
waits.
Right now the design of choice puts a vertical bar down the
left-hand side of the screen. This looked really good the first time
someone did it. Now it's the same old thing. (Aren't you tired of it?)
The same goes for those tiresome pop-up indexes that
call a CGI script:
Organizations that
understand
the online environment, such as Sun Microsystems
and some other technology companies, are continually tinkering with their
Web sites. They modify the graphics to make them load faster. They
experiment with new functionality and find out whether users react
positively. Most important, they adjust the structure of the site to
make it consistent and easier to navigate.
The approach taken by most newspapers comes straight from their roots in
print: Design is fixed; it's the content that changes.
When we talk about design online, though, we mean more than typefaces and
art. In the way that buildings are designed so that they allow for movement
through and within them, so a successful online information space is
designed for ease of navigation.
A building is designed to accommodate specified contents: a factory is
different from a school, and both are different from an apartment building.
Thus the information space for a publication is different from one for a
software company, and both are very different from the Web site of a
company like
Federal Express.
A high-rise office building needs to have some flexibility in its
design. One tenant may take several floors of the building, while on
another floor you'll find three different tenants with separate spaces. An
online space for a publication needs to have the same kind of flexibility
so that the publication can grow and adapt as needed.
At the same time, you always want to be able to find the fire stairs.
Often when an online newspaper tries something new -- adds a new section,
or a new feature -- it sticks out like a jumbo jet sitting in the middle of
a bank lobby. It just doesn't fit.
Online publications need to make allowances for continual, rapid change and
create designs that are not so rigid and similar across an entire
site. Today, whenever something new comes along, you may have to make a
number of changes across your online site -- or else your site begins to
look like a hodgepodge.
This calls for a different kind of production environment from those
that exist in most newsrooms in North America. For online production,
editorial workers need to be able to communicate easily with the
graphic designers, artists and programmers. Editors need to understand the
technology, and the programmers and other technical people need to
understand editing.
Structure and design changes can become necessary because of:
An online organization has to manage not only updating and adding new
material but also deleting, or replacing, old material that is
no longer useful or accurate. Both processes are ongoing -- change is a
natural part of having a publication online.
Ideally, the longer a publication is online, the better its structure will
become. Unlike a building of steel or stone, the online environment is
fluid. Publishers should not hesitate to make adjustments to design as soon
as they realize that something can be improved.
Redesign often. It will make your Web site better.
By Mindy McAdams
WHEN THE PRINTED VERSION
of a newspaper or magazine undergoes a redesign,
it's a major event. Many proposals are submitted and evaluated before one
is chosen, and the process can take months. Years may go by before another
redesign is even considered.