Hawaiʻi's Technology Community
A New Take on UI for Content-Focused UI
The NY Times had an interesting article today on a new gossip website:
site: http://wonderwall.msn.com/
article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/business/media/04celebrity.html?r...
This is quite an original take on a homepage for an otherwise traditional text article-focused content website. I really like the thumbnail article summaries that pop up when you mouse over a photo. Also, the flexibility provided to 1) have each story take up a unique/different range of cells 2) scroll back through the entire archive 3) easily hop to an article and back to the homepage 4) get unique urls even though you're in flash .... overall, I think the average reader will wind up reading a lot more articles than they would through a normal interface (and the article bears that out in terms of stats on length of average visit).
To be clear, the Flash-heavy structure might not work for sites with longer-form content.
I think the model could be successfully applied to other verticals (cars?). What do you all think?
site: http://wonderwall.msn.com/
article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/business/media/04celebrity.html?r...
This is quite an original take on a homepage for an otherwise traditional text article-focused content website. I really like the thumbnail article summaries that pop up when you mouse over a photo. Also, the flexibility provided to 1) have each story take up a unique/different range of cells 2) scroll back through the entire archive 3) easily hop to an article and back to the homepage 4) get unique urls even though you're in flash .... overall, I think the average reader will wind up reading a lot more articles than they would through a normal interface (and the article bears that out in terms of stats on length of average visit).
To be clear, the Flash-heavy structure might not work for sites with longer-form content.
I think the model could be successfully applied to other verticals (cars?). What do you all think?
Views: 27
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Scott Murphy on
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Hmm...Noscript firefox plugin gave me a clickjacking warning from the site....
Anyway, interesting site Gabe. The horizontal layout reminds me the lifestreaming of Julia. http://julia.nonsociety.com/main.php.
Personally, I think the site does some pretty interesting things but most things, I would only do in experimental sites. This is because I feel the site breaks user expectations and might violate Steve Krug's first rule, 'don't make me think' . However, you might be right and it might be more engaging. I would be interested in seeing test data on these sites.
I agree that one of the cool things about the site is how they got the unique urls working with flash and even how you can use the back-button on your browser to navigate. -
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