What makes for good news website design? Jesse James Garrett of the user experience firm Adaptive Path, who has worked with CNN and other news sites and who comes from a news background, offers these lessons.
1) Know who you are. Don’t try to be all things to all people, know what your users your audience comes to you for. Example: NPR thought it was in the breaking news business online. But research on their audience showed that NPR readers did not come to the site for breaking news but instead wanted depth, background and analysis.
2) Be IN the web, not on the Web. Your site is not a delivery channel for your product but should be something that that is intrinsic to the value of the web. It needs to be interlinked with the web, just just a place on it.
3) The web is not the world. Lots of sites view their site as the only source that people use for the web. People actually turn to different sites for different reasons and tasks. You need to know why people come to your site
4) What people do with news a) absorb it b) want to apply it, put int into practice c) want to share it – social engagement, connections with others 5) consume it because it gives them enjoyment, because they have an emotional connection to it.
5) Support different modes of engagement. Some people snack, some people dine. You need to accommodate all of them on your site. Example: the story highlights box atop every news page on CNN enables the snackers who just want a short summary.
6) EVERY page is the home page. People don't go: Home page to section page to story page. They come in from all different paths and all different angles.
7) Navigation is dead, long live navigation People rarely use global navigation elements. They do when they are explicitly task switching. Otherwise don’t get used much. Contextually relevant, related to the task at hand in that moment.
8) Put the multi in multimedia – think about diversity of ways to tell stories. Don't just do multimedia to do it.
9) Headlines should tempt not tease. Tempt is to make someone want to know what’s on the other side of the link. Tease is it makes them wonder. Online head writing is an art that is rarely understood and has yet to be mastered
10) Think out side the blob. It's way more than disgorging blocks of text. Structure data in a way that allows readers to move through it.
11) It's an application, not a publication. People use it, not just read it. Make it usable, and fun to use.
12) Try things out and throw things out. Test and evaluate and constantly evolve.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
More positive signs - from a pretty smart guy and a really smart guy
I'm going to tie two of yesterday's sessions together here with a similar theme, not only because I couldn't possibly do justice here to either presentation in this space but also because I heard reasons for a bit of optimism from both guys.
The first was Leo Laporte, who told a bland chicken-anchored luncheon crowd (a reporter actually used that "anchored luncheon" phrase in a story once and I can't resist using it here) about his trials and machinations in creating an audience around tech news for tech geeks. He noted how services like Google and Facebook serve up pre-selected audiences for advertisers, how pod casts are lame because they really are too much work (which I have been saying for years and I'm not even that smart) and how journalism is a holy calling - thank you, Leo - essential to a healthy democracy.
But the point he made that resounded with me is something I've been telling my colleagues and cohorts for years to keep their spirits up. As he put it: "There is always going to be a need for storytellers, people who can gather facts and explain them."
At the end of the day, we heard from Paul Saffo, who is a scary smart futurist from Stanford who advises the world's rich and powerful. His presentation, which I will be reviewing and following up on for some time, centered on the creative destruction technological change wreaks on economic systems, how people initially overestimate the impact of new technology then, when it starts to take off, drastically underestimate the impact. It was insightful, and funny as heck.
Saffo noted how the media world is in a time of many great uncertainties in which breaking news bulletins about earthquakes are being instantly delivered by machines and the power of the press is being replaced by the ability everyone now has to publish whatever they want.
The positive message: "Don't worry, we'll figure it out." What he meant by that is that if we as an industry can embrace uncertainty, learn from our failures, understand that change is never a linear process and realize that, to succeed, we need to learn how to harness the smallest creative act of our audiences - see Google 411, below - we will prevail and again thrive. That it will take some time, but the business model will work itself out.
As I've been telling my colleagues: Society has always needed scribes, as long as there's been crops and kings and culture, and that's never going to go away.
The first was Leo Laporte, who told a bland chicken-anchored luncheon crowd (a reporter actually used that "anchored luncheon" phrase in a story once and I can't resist using it here) about his trials and machinations in creating an audience around tech news for tech geeks. He noted how services like Google and Facebook serve up pre-selected audiences for advertisers, how pod casts are lame because they really are too much work (which I have been saying for years and I'm not even that smart) and how journalism is a holy calling - thank you, Leo - essential to a healthy democracy.
But the point he made that resounded with me is something I've been telling my colleagues and cohorts for years to keep their spirits up. As he put it: "There is always going to be a need for storytellers, people who can gather facts and explain them."
At the end of the day, we heard from Paul Saffo, who is a scary smart futurist from Stanford who advises the world's rich and powerful. His presentation, which I will be reviewing and following up on for some time, centered on the creative destruction technological change wreaks on economic systems, how people initially overestimate the impact of new technology then, when it starts to take off, drastically underestimate the impact. It was insightful, and funny as heck.
Saffo noted how the media world is in a time of many great uncertainties in which breaking news bulletins about earthquakes are being instantly delivered by machines and the power of the press is being replaced by the ability everyone now has to publish whatever they want.
The positive message: "Don't worry, we'll figure it out." What he meant by that is that if we as an industry can embrace uncertainty, learn from our failures, understand that change is never a linear process and realize that, to succeed, we need to learn how to harness the smallest creative act of our audiences - see Google 411, below - we will prevail and again thrive. That it will take some time, but the business model will work itself out.
As I've been telling my colleagues: Society has always needed scribes, as long as there's been crops and kings and culture, and that's never going to go away.
Amazing new stuff - Oh brave new world
In preparation for her presentation on the "Ten Top Tech Trends You've (Still) Never Heard Of," My friend Amy Webb of Webb Media Group set up a little contest, asking ONA members to list what they thought the trends were. I didn't bite. I knew my responses would be too general, too non-specific. I was chicken.
And I was right. "Journalists need to think about tech in a granular way." She does. And she knows her stuff.
Here's a quick run through her mind-boggling list. She lists the tools she was referring to on her site. (Note, Amy - who twice threatened to kill a pushy photographer - was, as always, hilarious. Sorry, but this isn't.)
1) Real-time web. These are tools that publish online immediately, with no digital lag time. Now, now NOW. One example, Robo.to, with which people can publish soundless four-second video clips instantly. "Facebook and Twitter are changing cusomers expectations for how information is sent." with which you can email content to a blog and it posts. "The public expects that as soon as content gets created that they will be able to find it." I had this experience when I had a breaking news reporter going to some little fire. Our first blog post said only that firefighters were on their way to a fire. An impatient reader commented with a demand to know right then what burned, what caused it, what happened, etc. "Dude, the firefighters aren't even their yet!"
2) Light blogging. These are tools like Posterous with which you can email content to a blog and it posts.
She called this trend a "super game-changer." "Reporters can easiliy send text and mp3s and even video from mobile phones."
3) Personalization. Not customization but a web world offered up to suit your needs. Think Pandora, which knows your musical preferences and can even let you know when a band you might like is coming to your town. Among the most scary was a beta IE plug-in called Re:search, that searches through your hard drive (gasp!) o ascertain your preferences. For us, this would mean knowing that that guy wanted the immediate skinny on the fire product and letting him know, "Hey, we're working on it."
4) Interactive TV. This is TV on a screen alongside whatever else you're reading, working on, playing with, etc., bringing everything in one place. She noted this "could bring back local news" for the new generation of multi-digi-taskers.
5) Identity recognition. Apps like Picasa and Face.com are pretty much learning what everyone looks like so that they can tell you who they are. The WOW fact: 2.3 billion faces are already recognized in this manner. She also mentioned why Google is giving away voice-activated search on 1-800-411-GOOG (I love this tool): To learn how to accurately translate voices, everyone's voice. OK, that is a wee bit scary. "I know what you're doing, Hal."
6) Augmented reality. These are tools that, using your cell-phone's camera, give you an annotated view of the world, with "windows popping up showing you what you're looking at," little labels on buildings, mountains, viewpoints, what have you, telling you what they are. My favorite were the tools that help you navigate a subway station or a mall, as I NEVER get lost on city streets. (Um, yeah, right, sure.)
At dinner my wife made a good point on this, noting how some people already experience reality through a viewfinder, taking pictures of everything rather than actually experiencing it themselves. (OK who watches all that video anyway?) She's right, but she also agreed that a little annotation wouldn't hurt, as long as you turn it off once in a while.
7) User-generated sensor data. This was amazing. She showed a clip of little dots moving around San Francisco. Each dot was a person with an activated cell phone walking around. The result was a graphic showing where people go and where they congregate in bunches: Hard data extrapolated from the actions of people just going about their lives. I can't imagine yet how we would use this, but man, the potential.
8) Mobil life. She was referring to bar codes and codes on your phone that allow you to scan a symbol on a street sign to get more information on something, or to buy a mocha frappuccino with low-fat milk using your mobile phone to pay. (Great. Now when I lose my phone I'm really hosed.)
9) Geo location. Want a map on your phone showing you not only where you are but also where all the sex offenders are around you, and who they are and what they did. It's already available for you iPhone. Other apps show you what friends are nearby. And, of course, where the Starbucks are for that frappuccino.
10) The internet of things. Soon, we were told, all our appliances will have IP addresses and will be able to take actions without us doing things. Your refrigerator realizes you're out of milk and orders it for you. For us, with activated pages, we could tell who's reading the jumps of stories. But, I fear, things aren't that smart, so in the early years, we're going to end up with nine gallons of milk because someone pressed "Reset refrigerator."
Oh brave new world that has such applications. Now, how can we adopt these technologies to serve the news up to our customers? Or, more important, to enable them to serve the up news to us?
And I was right. "Journalists need to think about tech in a granular way." She does. And she knows her stuff.
Here's a quick run through her mind-boggling list. She lists the tools she was referring to on her site. (Note, Amy - who twice threatened to kill a pushy photographer - was, as always, hilarious. Sorry, but this isn't.) 1) Real-time web. These are tools that publish online immediately, with no digital lag time. Now, now NOW. One example, Robo.to, with which people can publish soundless four-second video clips instantly. "Facebook and Twitter are changing cusomers expectations for how information is sent." with which you can email content to a blog and it posts. "The public expects that as soon as content gets created that they will be able to find it." I had this experience when I had a breaking news reporter going to some little fire. Our first blog post said only that firefighters were on their way to a fire. An impatient reader commented with a demand to know right then what burned, what caused it, what happened, etc. "Dude, the firefighters aren't even their yet!"
2) Light blogging. These are tools like Posterous with which you can email content to a blog and it posts.
She called this trend a "super game-changer." "Reporters can easiliy send text and mp3s and even video from mobile phones."
3) Personalization. Not customization but a web world offered up to suit your needs. Think Pandora, which knows your musical preferences and can even let you know when a band you might like is coming to your town. Among the most scary was a beta IE plug-in called Re:search, that searches through your hard drive (gasp!) o ascertain your preferences. For us, this would mean knowing that that guy wanted the immediate skinny on the fire product and letting him know, "Hey, we're working on it."
4) Interactive TV. This is TV on a screen alongside whatever else you're reading, working on, playing with, etc., bringing everything in one place. She noted this "could bring back local news" for the new generation of multi-digi-taskers.
5) Identity recognition. Apps like Picasa and Face.com are pretty much learning what everyone looks like so that they can tell you who they are. The WOW fact: 2.3 billion faces are already recognized in this manner. She also mentioned why Google is giving away voice-activated search on 1-800-411-GOOG (I love this tool): To learn how to accurately translate voices, everyone's voice. OK, that is a wee bit scary. "I know what you're doing, Hal."
6) Augmented reality. These are tools that, using your cell-phone's camera, give you an annotated view of the world, with "windows popping up showing you what you're looking at," little labels on buildings, mountains, viewpoints, what have you, telling you what they are. My favorite were the tools that help you navigate a subway station or a mall, as I NEVER get lost on city streets. (Um, yeah, right, sure.)
At dinner my wife made a good point on this, noting how some people already experience reality through a viewfinder, taking pictures of everything rather than actually experiencing it themselves. (OK who watches all that video anyway?) She's right, but she also agreed that a little annotation wouldn't hurt, as long as you turn it off once in a while.
7) User-generated sensor data. This was amazing. She showed a clip of little dots moving around San Francisco. Each dot was a person with an activated cell phone walking around. The result was a graphic showing where people go and where they congregate in bunches: Hard data extrapolated from the actions of people just going about their lives. I can't imagine yet how we would use this, but man, the potential.
8) Mobil life. She was referring to bar codes and codes on your phone that allow you to scan a symbol on a street sign to get more information on something, or to buy a mocha frappuccino with low-fat milk using your mobile phone to pay. (Great. Now when I lose my phone I'm really hosed.)
9) Geo location. Want a map on your phone showing you not only where you are but also where all the sex offenders are around you, and who they are and what they did. It's already available for you iPhone. Other apps show you what friends are nearby. And, of course, where the Starbucks are for that frappuccino.
10) The internet of things. Soon, we were told, all our appliances will have IP addresses and will be able to take actions without us doing things. Your refrigerator realizes you're out of milk and orders it for you. For us, with activated pages, we could tell who's reading the jumps of stories. But, I fear, things aren't that smart, so in the early years, we're going to end up with nine gallons of milk because someone pressed "Reset refrigerator."
Oh brave new world that has such applications. Now, how can we adopt these technologies to serve the news up to our customers? Or, more important, to enable them to serve the up news to us?
Friday, October 02, 2009
So that great branding? A lucky accident
The Q&A with Evan Williams, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter - and formerly of Blogger, which I'm using right now, for that matter - kind of disappointed me, which is really unfair on my part.
That's because I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how Twitter and microblogging and other social networking tools have changed the world. How anyone can now spread the news of anything - John Q. Public but also newsman, marketers and maniacs. How dictators can no longer lock the foreign journalists up in their hotel to crack down on people protesting for democracy - as in Iran in recent months. How it was citizens who reported the dreadful violence in Mumbai - but also how users were misled by a kid in New Jersey that day, and how it could have been misused by the terrorists.
I was disappointed because Williams seemed like a clever businessman who helped create something - microblogging - without really realizing what he had made, how much potential it had, how it could change the world.
I'm sure he lays awake at night wondering how the service is ever going to turn a profit commensurate with its success, but I didn't get the impression he spends much time thinking about the deeper societal issues. Gutenberg talking about how nice the new printed bibles look.
Basically, the account he gave made it seem like the success of unintended consequences.
"We didn't start Twitter expecting it to be something really big. We stumbled into it and realized (later) it was a really big deal."
Even the name. He said the developers were talking about how getting a "status update," as they were initially called, from a cell phone in a pocket would make a user "twitch." Someone looked up twitch in the dictionary and "twitter"was the word just below it, meaning the sounds birds make. That led to the name, and the bird logo. And, he said, he has no idea what early user came up with Tweet.
He did say - other posters have already noted because I'm just now getting around to this - that Twitter is working on a feature that would list, or distinguish, reliable tweeters from the masses. And, he noted, speaking to us mainstream media types, "You shouldn't look on us as an example because no matter what we make less money than you do."
Another lesson for us. He noted starting Twitter was like planting seeds to see what grows. "Users taught us what Twitter should be." The lesson for us? "It's not up to you at that point."
That's because I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how Twitter and microblogging and other social networking tools have changed the world. How anyone can now spread the news of anything - John Q. Public but also newsman, marketers and maniacs. How dictators can no longer lock the foreign journalists up in their hotel to crack down on people protesting for democracy - as in Iran in recent months. How it was citizens who reported the dreadful violence in Mumbai - but also how users were misled by a kid in New Jersey that day, and how it could have been misused by the terrorists.
I was disappointed because Williams seemed like a clever businessman who helped create something - microblogging - without really realizing what he had made, how much potential it had, how it could change the world.
I'm sure he lays awake at night wondering how the service is ever going to turn a profit commensurate with its success, but I didn't get the impression he spends much time thinking about the deeper societal issues. Gutenberg talking about how nice the new printed bibles look.
Basically, the account he gave made it seem like the success of unintended consequences.
"We didn't start Twitter expecting it to be something really big. We stumbled into it and realized (later) it was a really big deal."
Even the name. He said the developers were talking about how getting a "status update," as they were initially called, from a cell phone in a pocket would make a user "twitch." Someone looked up twitch in the dictionary and "twitter"was the word just below it, meaning the sounds birds make. That led to the name, and the bird logo. And, he said, he has no idea what early user came up with Tweet.He did say - other posters have already noted because I'm just now getting around to this - that Twitter is working on a feature that would list, or distinguish, reliable tweeters from the masses. And, he noted, speaking to us mainstream media types, "You shouldn't look on us as an example because no matter what we make less money than you do."
Another lesson for us. He noted starting Twitter was like planting seeds to see what grows. "Users taught us what Twitter should be." The lesson for us? "It's not up to you at that point."
A positive indicator
It was nice to hear Jonathan Dube, president of the Online News Associaton, note this morning as our annual gathering began that while many journalists associations are canceling conferences -- actually some are scaling them back or combining conferences -- the ONA shindig is again a sell-out.
Obviously it's because newshounds know this is where our future will lie.
And it was heartening that Robert Niles noted this morning that the woe-is-us "whining" that prevailed at many previous conferences is now being replaced by a more hopeful and practical tone. (I heard Jay Rosen made the same point on Twitter but "Older posts are now unavailable.") I volunteered to steward my second ONA conference at after going to one and finding it - OK, I'm sorry - a mourning session, almost a wake, with presenters offering up chart after chart about declining print readership and increasing online use.
I wanted to shout out, "Hey! We're still strong, we still have huge audiences that respect what we do and we have time to fix what we need to fix." It was good that most of what was offered up today was practical, positive and focused on what we can - and have to do - to survive and thrive.
Obviously it's because newshounds know this is where our future will lie.
And it was heartening that Robert Niles noted this morning that the woe-is-us "whining" that prevailed at many previous conferences is now being replaced by a more hopeful and practical tone. (I heard Jay Rosen made the same point on Twitter but "Older posts are now unavailable.") I volunteered to steward my second ONA conference at after going to one and finding it - OK, I'm sorry - a mourning session, almost a wake, with presenters offering up chart after chart about declining print readership and increasing online use.
I wanted to shout out, "Hey! We're still strong, we still have huge audiences that respect what we do and we have time to fix what we need to fix." It was good that most of what was offered up today was practical, positive and focused on what we can - and have to do - to survive and thrive.
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