3.Dynamical Elements and Interactivity
4.Search Function and Priotizing
5.Consistency and Color Scheme
6.Personalization and Audience
Introduction
Google News brings online
readers to the cutting edge of news with its news Web site, which presents
new stories each time you check the page, groups related headlines
and photos from thousands of sources worldwide, and ¡°enables readers
to see how different news organizations are reporting the same story¡±
(Google news, Retrieved March 28, 2003). This service uses its search
algorithms rather than human editors to select news reports. The reports
are arranged under categories such as World, U.S., Business, Science/Technology,
Sports and Entertainment. These classifications give users the very
latest news from 4,500 different sources.
Nevertheless, the Google News site needs several design changes to improve
its organization and to emphasize its unique characteristics as a news
aggregator.
1. Layout and Design
The current Google news homepage has a structure
of ¡°a grid layout¡± in conjunction with ¡°above-the-fold¡± and ¡°expanding-width
screen size¡± characteristics. But it fails to have a layout structure
for hooking audience attentions to the top stories since each category,
such as World and Entertainment, has almost the same size of layer
placement, and each report has the same amount of blurbs and the same
sized pictures. Therefore, visitors may not get a strong impression
when they first visit the site. By emphasizing top news through allocating
a bigger sized picture and removing the second top story in the same
placement, the Google News Web site could hook more audiences as its
everyday users. Also, ¡°More top stories¡± are divided into two sections,
which divides users¡¯ attention on the Web site and leads to redundancy.
I suggest ¡°a clear first read¡± layout, ¡°a technique from graphic design
that helps focus Web pages and gives readers a clear first impression¡±
(Duyne et al., 2002. p. 512). As an example, modification ¡°1¡± suggests
a re-designed layout and color scheme. It emphasizes and prioritizes
the information on the page by re-placement and re-sizing, and coloring
the background of the top story box. Also, I suggest merging the formerly
separated ¡°more top stories¡± section.
Last modified April 2, 2003 by Hyun Joo LEE