Research

Research

Yahoo news (http://news.yahoo.com/ )is apparently the most popular news website - although i can't really see why. It does have a fixed left hand menu as well as a nav bar, and a clear search bar at the top of its home page, but it is far from aesthetically pleasing. everything is blue, black and white, with images as exceptions. It also has an ad section on the right which only scrolls so far, while the other 2/3s is like the facebook news feed - constantly scrolling back in time.

The LA Times was nominated for the webby award for best user experience 2015. I like how the header hides when you scroll down but if you start scrolling back up it reappears to help you navigate quickly to another section.

I'm not fond of the AD behind the main window, it is distracting from the importance of the content.

The watch this section is a good idea. It means people who don't want to read the news, like Hemi, could just go to articles with a video story. They aren't limited to only seeing those articles though.

I don't like how it reloads and auto plays video ads.

The New York Times won the webby award for best news site. Their layout is much more traditional, paying homeage to the print version, which is quite nice in a way. Although it does lack some hierachy using all sans-serif typefaces in similar weights, and the nav bar isn't easy to read. perhaps the homeage could have been implemented in a better way. The sections button is a good idea.

Vice News is very image based. Their top story appears as a full width image, i find this very impactful. I think their ADs get too much space and importants thought - every third item is a banner ad, almost the same size as the stories. They signify you can click on the image to get to the story by changing the headline and the read button to read on hover.

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Quartz have a very unique minimalist homepage which is quite refreshing, although they don't have as much content either. They are solely business articles and only online. Their choice to display only headlines on thier homepage is an interesting one, seeing as images are what normally draw us in to the story. I liked how they used the hover on the main headline to display the image. Overall this site is less chaotic then the other news sites. could this principal be applied to each section of the full news website as successfully?

Huffington Post have an option they call "quick read". Essentially this is the same as my preview mode only it is activated optionally by clicking on the quick read box that appears in the corner on hover.

For hemi's mobile hover isn't an option, alternately the play icon on the corner could activate the autoplay preview window. Although Hemi has specifically asked for video articles so he does want to watch the video; but other users might not, and they would be forced to watch the video before getting the option to read the article.