Blog 8: A web design journey from good to bad.

The Rocky Mountain News, which is one of Denver’s two newspapers (the other being the more well-known Denver Post), is an example of a website that is well-designed, easy-to-navigate and up-with-the times in terms of its multimedia content. The website features special-to-the-web additions on regular print stories as well as special projects that utilize photo slideshows and video content. An example of the latter would be the paper’s “We Are America” multimedia piece about a march on the Colorado capital for immigration reform.. This multimedia presentation combines a slideshow with an interactive map and audio—it lets the event be told solely in this very visual, interactive manner—an example of the highest quality Flash/multimedia work that is out there. I think this is particularly interesting and impressive because many other multimedia pieces like it I’ve seen throughout the quarter as I’ve worked on these assignments seem to be largely explanatory or investigative pieces; pieces that would take time to report and therefore allow for time to build on Flash. This piece is simple event coverage, however and was presumably put together with a lot faster turnaround than many other multimedia presentations of its caliber out there.

The Rocky Mountain News is also constantly updating its stories: after navigating around the site checking out various articles and features for about an hour, I refreshed its home page and found completely different lead stories than the ones featured as the lead stories when I logged onto the site. This means that the paper’s web staff likely has the resources and man power to continually update content. The design and content itself, however, aside from web extras, seems reflective of what was in the print version that day. In other words, local Denver area stories are at the top of the website rather than national stories, and the various tabs at the top (news, business, recreation, opinion, web extra) are clear and consistent in their design. The fonts are not too small and the site does not overwhelm the viewer on its homepage with too much content, relying instead on clear, visible links and a singular main photo on its main page.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press’ website, on the other hand, has a design that is not necessarily conducive or inviting (although I suspect it may be going through a redesign). At the Pioneer Press’ website, viewers are presented with the main element of a link to the pdf version of the newspaper that day, with the secondary elements being a laundry list of links to the stories that ran that day. While this arrangement does present the view with the option of reading the newspaper more like the newspaper in print (with the pdf version as its main attraction) as well as the option of reading stories directly on the website, I suspect (and would argue that the Pew study confirms) that viewers don’t go to local news websites like this one seeking the same visual experience as they would get if they read the newspaper in print with their morning coffee. To that end, making a link to the pdf version of the newspaper is a poor decision, and it also makes for a rather unappealing first glance at the website—there are no visuals, no photos, no links to video and no consistently designed tabs linking to the rest of the paper as with the Rocky Mountain News’ website. I would add these things to fix the design, and move the pdf link to a far less prominent place on the paper’s home page.