NY Times Site

In the Chapter 6 reading, on p.3, we are encouraged to visit the NY Times site, for an example of how the deeper the user ‘drills down’ to tertiary level pages, the information becomes more specific.

I’m a frequent visitor to the New York Times site, and so this reading lead me to consider it from a design point of view.

 As one might expect from this site, it is print based. It resembles a print newspaper in that there are a number of columns, which vary from four to six.   It differs from a conventional newspaper in that instead of the columns being filled with articles, they are filled with links which take you to the article itself. For the articles that are linked to from the “above the fold” section, the first sentence of the linked-to article appears as well.

Although the site is heavily print oriented, there are more pictures than you would find in a print newspaper, and, of course, they’re in colour. As well, there are videos, the window for which are horizontally the width of two or three columns.

There is a row about midway down the entire length of the page that uses pictures to link to articles. This breaks up the text appearance of the page. Below the point, the site is pretty much text only, except for the ads.

Beyond the home page, the site does get more specific. For instance, there’s an article about vintage Fiats. The link of course goes to the article itself, which is displayed in a single, wide column. But as well, that page has ads that seem to be tailored to car enthusiasts.  There is also the MOST POPULAR list, which lets you access the most popular articles of the day.

The designers of this site have a challenge, because they are not the stars of the site. The design must be unobtrusive, so the content, which is the attraction, can shine. And yet it has to be easy to navigate, and not present obstacles.  I think they do this well –perhaps the proof of this is that I don’t usually consider that the site has any design elements at all.

Advertisement