Critique: CNN.com’s Redesign

CNN then and now.

When I first browsed to CNN.com on the 26th of October and noticed the change, my initial reaction was a bit underwhelming; in spite of this, I was physically assaulted by that red header. The red got to me, it felt like they had taken a step backwards in their design, and I was pretty unhappy. This was in stark contrast to the rather neutral feel of the previous iteration.

Then I started to browse the site and get a handle on my reaction, and I’ve found the red grates a little less on the nerves, but only because it’s become background noise to me now, and the new design bothers me less, though I do not like the direction they’re heading in.

In Their Words

This redesign is more user-centric in execution. They’re promoting new customization features, will focus more on video and photography, and will promote more feature oriented content; it appears they’re minimizing the importance of breaking news stories (more on that later) in this design.

A new section, NewsPulse, lists the most popular news of the last 24 hours. This is determined by popularity, however, what makes it popular is unclear to me at this time. Perhaps number of views?

CNN.com senior vice president and general manager K.C. Estenson touted the makeover as “a total reimagining of CNN.com… the breadth and depth of the new site will give users a fresh new way to experience CNN’s content.” – Multichannel News

All in all, an interesting direction for the news organization.

The Good

CNN.com has done some things right in this new redesign that I want to note. First, the site seems less visually cluttered, particularly at higher resolutions; second, there is a sense of intended visual balance in the organization of the front page and the site overall; and third, the red, while a little too powerful, brings some warmth to the almost somber impression the previous design engendered (in me at least, perhaps not the general population).

1. Visual Clutter

In a lot of ways, the redesign seems a lot less chaotic. Many sites in this genre suffer from a bit of information overload, with sidebars, ads, and other features adding visual clutter to article pages; this design seems to minimize that clutter by opening up the old content containers and leaving ample white space at wider resolutions.

Content feels more constrained in containers used in the old design. Added white space helps to eliminate visual clutter in the new.

At lower resolutions, the affect may become less obvious, but still feel less constrained, and so this is a win for me.

2. Visual Balance

Visual balance is certainly important in design and, in particular, it is especially important in designing a web site for a news organization. Below is the comparison between the two version’s home pages.

In this particular case I say the new version is purposefully designed because each section below the primary content has a fixed height and width, and it appears that it is done deliberately to separate elements in a more obvious fashion; the old site suffers slightly as it has a cluttered feel now.

3. Color

While not particularly necessary, it is a bit of a change of pace from the more neutral design previously in use at the site. This could go one way or the other as the red header is an assault on the senses.

The Bad…ish

Between you and I, this design is a step backwards from the previous rendition; while it is not the case in a side by side comparison, the content “feels” smaller, though it is better organized visually. Quite frankly, the more I use the site, the more I appreciate it.

The Header

One of my least favorite parts of the old design was the header; this is mostly because it was the one aspect of the site that was liquid and would expand based on the window size. This was not appealing to me because it was far too large and you were moving from the center of the screen all the way to the edges to access different sections of the site. A bit of a burden from a usability standpoint.

The one complaint I have about the new header is the placement of the logo. I’m so used to logos being placed at the left edge of the layout that it just feels off, even though it looks just fine where it is, and evokes a bit of a newspaper feel in it’s placement.

The old header was a liquid design.

The new header has a fixed width and is centered. The logo is centered, though, and I am not sold on that.

Text and News

The size of text on the home page is a bit problematic at higher resolutions. The default size is far too small, and this is particularly troubling, as the previous site did not suffer from this.

Additionally, breaking stories have not been placed in such a way as to be the primary focus of browsing; feature stories and videos have been given the most prominent position in the design, while breaking stories are a secondary element. This gives me pause, as it makes it clear what the content creators deem to be most important.

Conclusion

Overall, this redesign works, even while it feels like a step backwards, simply because their focus has changed from pure news delivery to delivery of media and the creation of a customized user experience.

This was one of my primary sources of news, and I will continue to use the site to gain more perspective on its implementation as well as for the content they promise to deliver.

Geocities to Shutdown Today

Well this development is a mildly odd thing, considering I thought this already happened. What this tells me is the web has progressed so very, very far in such a short time. I don’t remember my old Geocities page, but it probably disappeared more than a decade ago, sadly.

Anyway, Geocities got me in the web design game and it turns out that it was a pretty good decision; for nostalgic reasons, I am saddened by this news.

A moment of silence please.

Unsustainable Healthcare Costs

At this point, it seems more plausible that the cost of health insurance will keep rising, just as the costs of health care services have continued to climb. The upshot is that the burdens of mandatory purchase, the subsidy costs and the associated implicit marginal tax rates will all increase, eventually to the point of unsustainability. — Tyler Cowen

We continue to debate healthcare proposals in this country, almost non-stop, while the economy burns and fails to recover in any meaningful fashion. On the minds of politicians is not the well-being of the citizenry, or it’s interests, but rather it is the progression of a certain agenda above all else, as the mechanisms are in place to do so; whether or not it can be accomplished within the ranks of the party is mildly debatable, at least.

What the government might consider, rather than this agenda that is, are ideas proven to generate a little momentum in the recovery process: tax breaks, tending to the fiscal health of the federal government, reducing regulatory control on private sector practices, etc. But, health care is just too important.

The quote below is a from Tyler Cowen, How an Insurance Mandate Could Leave Many Worse Off, discussing why the current proposals are eventually doomed to thrive in the pile of unsustainable government ideas.

A further problem is “mandate creep,” which we’ve seen at the state level, as groups lobby for various types of coverage — whether for acupuncture, alcoholism and fertility treatments, for example, or for chiropractor services or marriage counseling.

There are now about 1,500 insurance mandates among the various states, and hundreds of others are under consideration. The dynamic at work here is that the affected groups have a big incentive to push for mandates, while most other people are unaware of the specific issues and don’t become involved.

Because mandates don’t stay modest for long, health insurance would become all the more expensive. The Obama administration’s cost estimates haven’t considered these longer-run “political economy” issues.

Why politicians will not look to these sorts of predictions as an indicator of why their current plans are foolhardy and dangerous is nerve wracking. This is all via, Tyler Cowen. Be sure to read through the comments as it is usually an interesting discussion.