design
Whitney Hess wrote a fantastic article “No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas” for A List Apart. It’s full of invaluable communication techniques and real-world examples of how others have effectively pushed back on bad ideas. For anyone who struggles with difficult clients or stakeholders, this is a must read.
An excerpt:
As a user experience designer, I have made a career out of having to say No. It is my job to put an end to bad design practices within an organization before I can make any progress on improving the lives of our customers. And it’s rarely easy…Each one of us brings an area of specialization to our projects, and it is our responsibility to exhibit that expertise. If you don’t know anything that no one else on your team knows, then it’s probably time to walk away. But if you do, it is your duty to assert that capability and share your knowledge for the betterment of the final product.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “A ‘no’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.” As people who create stuff with the hope that other people will use it, it is outright cowardly for us to protect ourselves before defending the needs of our users.
We launched an iPad app this week: ABC News iPad App. I’ll post more when I have a chance, but for now a few initial reviews:
“TV network ABC has released a custom ABC News iPad app that’s interesting for two reasons—its clever use of HTML5 and the amazing rotating Globe of News.” —Gizmodo
“A lot of people have just ported over iPhone applications, but this actually, is the first time I’ve seen a news site that’s actually taking advantage of the whole interface [of the iPad]..”—Nick Bilton from the NYTimes
“ABC News Puts A Different Spin On Its iPad App” —Paid Content
And my favorite critique from Twitter: “Glad to see the ABC iPad app has really taken key learnings from hip-hop music videos and brought the fish-eye lens to news UI.” —@rdesign
This week we launched some small improvements to the ABC News homepage. This iteration of the homepage is by no means a large step forward. For one, it does not address many of the numerous and fundamental navigational, design, or user experience challenges across the site.
That said, this update is intended as a small step to simplify the presentation of the content on the homepage itself, and to give each of the ABC News programs a permanent spot above the fold on the homepage. While this was a relatively quick project, it was truly a team effort with stakeholders from across the organization involved, and it’s just the beginning of what we have cooking.
So what’s different with these small tweaks?
All Programs Above the Fold
For one, the area devoted to programs is consolidated from disparate elements scattered across the homepage into a single accordion component at the top of the c-column. The hope is that our users will learn to look to the top of the right column for the latest and greatest from the programs.
Depending on what time of day you visit the abcnews.com homepage, the accordion will open by default to a different program (Good Morning America in the morning, World News in the afternoon and early evening, Nightline overnight, etc.). If full episodes of the program are available, there’s a link next to the program logo. Special features like Diane’s Question of the Day and George’s Bottom Line blog are touted within the respective program spaces in the accordion.
Less is More
Secondly, the presentation of latest headlines has been simplified so the headlines are easier to scan and there is a clearer hierarchy to the top of the page. A new area in the a-col is devoted to stories, slideshows, and videos that shouldn’t be missed.
In the a/b-cols below the fold, the display of content in each section (politics, health, etc.) has been simplified so that it is easier to scan and digest the headlines on the page.
Include Differentiators
Local news, weather, and special features from local ABC television stations are now much higher on the page. Below the fold, we’ve added a new section to the c-col, “This Day in History” that highlights newsworthy events from the ABC News video archives. One video from today covers the Blackout from July 14, 1977, a “massive blackout lasting 25 hours result[ing] in looting and fires in New York City.”
All and all, the homepage is much shorter, and better organized. While the changes are not as large a step forward as many of us would like, they are a small iteration in the right direction.
Next Steps
Next steps: we will test how these updates perform, continue to tweak, and use the learnings to inform more comprehensive updates to the design and user experience of the product.
If you’re on a good account, the work at agencies or smaller design firms can be fun, innovative, and creatively challenging but the hours can be brutal. On the client-side, as part of an in-house design or product team, the work-life balance can be better but the work itself can be less creative and innovative as it gets overwhelmed by organizational politics or suffers from tunnel vision and competing priorities for time and resources. Start-ups can be exciting but can suffer from poor business models or personality-driven processes.
I realize there are a lot of variables that factor into this question (brand, salary, title, personality of coworkers, company vision and leadership) and that we all value different things. But I’m interested in other perspectives from designers working in the industry.
What do you value most: the work itself, the salary, the team, the awards and industry recognition, or work-life balance? What are the best companies to work for as an interactive designer in NYC?
Yesterday I launched a redesign of Song Isabel Hee’s portfolio. Her work is so strong and the photography so compelling that I wanted to keep the design as simple and clean as possible. A grid with a flexible layout shifts to match the browser width. Built on WordPress for easy maintenance and updating, the custom theme includes a peppering of jquery.cycle to power the slideshows within each project. It was really refreshing to complete a project in a few days (a welcome change from the day job).