Am I the only one who thinks his 'redesign' just looks like any other blog?
Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
21–30 of 135 posts
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#22Well having been in the person in charge of a major news website myself I can say we all have lovely designs like this pinned to the walls next our desks. And while I really like his designs and have turned to Andy many times for inspiration, there are some serious context problems... and while I'm bored and off work I might as well write a critique... I had an near identical sports section to the one he designed pin…
Many thanks for the insight. This is why I love HN.
No worries, I like to help when I can, part of the reason I took the news position in the first place :)
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#23Not to be a pain, the design is good, but there's no place to actually put an ad, considering the advertisements are one of their sources of revenue
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#24The problem with such a post is that it violates the first principle of user centered design. Talk to your users. Did anyone tell him that NYT is broken? Did he go and ask a single user who goes to NYT everyday to figure out what his problems are? Or saw him use the site.
It's easy to re-design something from outside in. It's much harder to design it inside out when you have a more complete picture of what users are doing and have a rough idea of what they want.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#25I know everybody hates ads, but it only reinforces the "naive businessmen" stereotype of designers when people say stuff like this: "Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be eliminated from the pages." That's like saying because you pay for magazines they also don't need to have ads. That's in no way at all how the content business works.
Newspapers made the mistake of devaluing their ad inventory by increasing their supply. There's a really good – business – argument to be made for cutting the number of ad slots on the page.
You shouldn't underestimate how much newspapers know about the economics of their inventory. In many ways, ad slots are price discrimination. Companies that want 100% share of voice (ie: no one else gets ads on the page) will pay a premium to get it. A small company may just buy a cheaper ad slot at the bottom of the page. They have thousands of permutations on how they can sell ads, and they will shut off as many slots as necessary to get a premium campaign going.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#26I know everybody hates ads, but it only reinforces the "naive businessmen" stereotype of designers when people say stuff like this: "Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be eliminated from the pages." That's like saying because you pay for magazines they also don't need to have ads. That's in no way at all how the content business works.
Newspapers made the mistake of devaluing their ad inventory by increasing their supply. There's a really good – business – argument to be made for cutting the number of ad slots on the page.
Indeed. It can be a reinforcing cycle either way. On the one hand, you devalue your ads by taking any offer that comes along, ignoring the effectiveness of ads, and cramming your content with as much ad space as possible. In this mode readers have no value for ads and ad space becomes less and less valuable. On the other hand, if you put a lot of effort into procuring good and relevant ads, if you maintain a high standard for the ads you accept, and if you keep ad space under control then ads can potentially become more and more valuable.
If you come into the problem with the idea that the only way to control ad revenue is by the number of ads on the screen you've already lost, you're playing in the amateur leagues.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#27The design has its moments but I actually like NYT. The only thing I would like more is fixed dimensions for items on the front page, maybe 2 column layout with both sides perfectly aligned per item. The draw of newspaper sites is both the quality content within articles but the curation of articles themselves so having everything in uniform lists is too confusing. Additions I wouldn't mind are most tweeted or tweeted by your friends type social media integration.
If design was the only thing killing the newspaper industry their problems would be solved.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#28Well having been in the person in charge of a major news website myself I can say we all have lovely designs like this pinned to the walls next our desks. And while I really like his designs and have turned to Andy many times for inspiration, there are some serious context problems... and while I'm bored and off work I might as well write a critique... I had an near identical sports section to the one he designed pin…
Also probably worth mentioning while on the subject all my research and experience added up to designs that are very close to Al Jeezera.
Perhaps I just favor it because it resembles my own thinking but I believe they have one of the best designed news sites out there: http://english.aljazeera.net
Clean, crisp, clear, all gridded up nice and tidy. Handling information overload well.
Being a new kid on the block, no legacy systems or clients to contended with, learning from every one else's mistakes I assume play a huge part in why Al Jeezera looks so good.
If I can remember the worst news site I've seen I'll post it. Its a state level TV station from America somewhere, shocking abuses in design. It was like trying to read at a pocket dictionary from 10 feet away, total text chaos.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#29Andy's designs look beautiful, but I'm reminded of the old saying: "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy".
I'm afraid that if you take his designs as a starting point, and revise them based on the needs of the NYTimes and the expectations of its millions of visitors, they would require a large number of changes and would more closely resemble the current NYTimes.com
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#30A few years ago, I laid out head-to-head comparisons of the top newspapers in the US with and without adblock and noscript. NYTimes, on a screen, is easily the best newspaper. Unfortunately, the pressure of jamming more and more links and stories above the fold seems to have eroded the NYTimes usability.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...
We should do a poll too: I think a lot of netizens would support NYTimes to the same degree they do NPR, but I don't think the average netizen donates $260 to NPR annually (the price NYTimes is asking for their tablet app).