UX Booth

The homepage of signonsandiego.com

The first thing I notice is the banner ad up top. When I realize it’s a banner ad, I feel a bit duped. The page lacks much color, so I think that’s why I gravitated towards the banner ad. The next thing I do is look at the top left of the screen, to see “Sign On San Diego.com.” Next, I’m drawn to the large picture on the page. Underneath this, I see the heading “Heating up at Coachella.” I’m then drawn to the stories next to the featured story. It appears this website uses a grid, and that’s a good thing because otherwise it would be very difficult to find anything.

Scrolling down the page, again, I notice the advertising outright. There’s a lot of it, to be sure. I read the heading “Multimedia” and then scan for other headers: Business & Sports, Union-Tribune Columnists & Weblogs, and Features & Entertainment. None of these particularly appeal to me, and here’s why: each section uses the same format to present it’s content. This is probably not the fault of the designers, though—they have a huge variety of stories and information to present so a simple format is best. Still, as someone who is used to the flashy and multi-media rich interfaces of modern websites, my eyes become tired and my “regular” way of browsing sites doesn’t work.

Next, I decide to try other sections of the site. I’ve been to exactly two different section of the site and found a different presentation for the content inside of each. Maybe the third time is a charm. Upon clicking on “Sports,” I’m presented with even more options for how deep I wish to go down the rabbit hole. I decide to click on Chargers.

The resulting section removes the other options from my view. Again, if I accidentally clicked on Chargers, or wished to return “Home,” I wouldn’t really know where to begin. This leads to an interesting point. On the resulting Chargers page, there are two home links. How does one reconcile this in their mind? Perhaps I wish to go back and choose a different section of the Sports category to browse. I click on the “lower” of the Home links. No dice. It looks like I’ve made my choice and now I’m stuck with it.

Looking around the Smart Living section is like taking a breath of fresh air, though. Although it suffers from many of the problems of it’s parent site. This microsite is easier to browse and makes better use of color and typography. While many of the stories in this section are short, they appear longer due to the narrow content area.

Signonsandiego.com offers a compelling, multi-faceted newspaper site to their community. Unfortunately, each section of the site presents a unique challenge as well as its own subnavigation. Each part of signonsandiego.com feels like its own site and this is its core issue.

Because the content in this site spans many different sections, its easy to be reading an article in sports and end up in the entertainment section, which leaves users feeling like they’ve left the site they were on. What more, modern websites and blogs address a specific issue, so the fact that signonsandiego tries to do everything at once seems like overkill.

In the end, users will most likely end up frustrated because at any given time, the section of the site they end up on does not resemble the front page that greeted them when they came to the site.

• Establish Consistency — Try and figure out what elements need to be on each page. Perhaps the logo always appears in the top left. Whatever the case, make sure the some elements appear on every page in the same position. It helps users feel grounded.
• Orient the User and Simplify — Directly following the point above, make sure that your users know where they are on your site at all times. Highlight the “tab” that “contains” the content your user is seeing. Use navigational elements like breadcrumbs and contextual navigation (a la wikipedia.org) to help users get around your content. Finally, try and de-emphasize navigation that takes users to content that isn’t related to what they’re looking at. On some pages, there were nearly 20 links within the top 200 pixels on the page. Is this truly necessary?
• Use Microsites where Appropriate — Many of the sections of signonsandiego.com appear to be self-contained but lack any real sense of distinction. The best example of a microsite from what is present on the site is the Entertainment section, followed by the Smart Living section. Consider providing similar treatments to the other sections, but keep in mind that these microsites should employ consistency and good information architecture so that users feel like they’re still on your website.
• Use Good Graphic Design Principles — Make sure to pay attention to the consistency, repetition, alignment and position of elements on your site. If a “story” contains things like an author, date, and article copy, make the title of the story bigger than those elements, and make sure it precedes them. In this way, your users will understand their grouping. Make sure to establish a convention for how you display this information and stick to it.