Re: is there a rule ...


"GoneBeforeMyTime" <Fans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Johnny Twelve-Point presented by JFT" <usenetremove@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:ig2s35tnass2vmd60u7b4l76bbe24m6kf2@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:03:54 -0700, "GoneBeforeMyTime"
<Fans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"GoneBeforeMyTime" <Fans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Who might this be from the very top post?

" I also used to race bikes, participated in the Olympics and raced for
7-11
and Motorola"
http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?t=1128&page=42

Dude was fast.

Well, I finished reading that thread. I think the two best replies were
Scott McKinley and this guy by the ID of Frankrevi. However, Velogirl also
posted a decent reply. There were hundreds of good shorter replies very much
spot on IMO. One guy likened it to the Titanic, with I suppose Ismay being
FP CEO Price and Captain Smith being John Stevenson. They hit an iceberg,
and Ismay says "This ship can't sink"!

Frankrevi wrote this from CN Forum...

"To John, Daniel, Greg, and Stefan (and Future Publishing):

I'm an IT and web professional and run an ad-sponsored site, as well as a
long time CN reader. I've spent some days with the new site and read all 72
(and counting) pages of this post before commenting. I appreciate all of
your time, energy, expertise, and good will in redesigning the site and
genuinely participating in this thread. I hope you will find my feedback
useful.

I appreciate the need to redesign the site from the back end, I've been
there (I am there...). I appreciate the need to be a viable commercial
business, that's a good thing, and treating sponsors right is important.

These need to be clearly distinguished from the user interface design. This
thread is really only about the user interface design and information
architecture and how it relates to your users.

When posters say they want the old site back, what they want is the user
interface from the old site. When you hear this 700+ times in three days,
this is not just the typical user resistance to change that will blow over
quickly once the dust settles.

The ratio of people who have a given opinion to those that take the effort
to contact their political representative is typically taken to be 100:1;
I'd guess your situation is similar.

What it means is that design considerations very important to your users
have been lost.

In fact the posts on this thread, if you discard the outrage and bad
manners, and normalize for resistance to change per se, show quite a
coherent set of major substantive objections that you would do well to
address strategically. Cribbing and editing from scottsmack (post #411 -
worth rereading):

----------------
A few themes clearly stick out in the 72+ pages of criticism:
- Simplicity of content access and navigation
- Spoilers
- Live reports
- Simplicity of content access and navigation
- Depth of content (and again, easy access to that depth)
- Loading speed
- Mobile access
None of these are simply trivial design issues; they are critical to the
utility of the site and access to its valuable and unique content. The
redesign should have identified these as key objectives essential to retain
and attract users. In the sit-forward medium of online, function needs to
lead form.
----------------

I reiterate that none of these are trivial fixes, and would require wise
design and good implementation to properly resolve. The problem is not going
to go away with a few formatting changes and a little div rearrangement.

There are many good specific suggestions in this thread, and I have a number
of them myself, that would help in the larger task. Personally I agree that
the old UI would benefit from improvement, and there are a couple things in
the new design I think are good.

But the larger issue is the point: The new user interface design
1) is missing many of the best attributes of the old
2) fails to meet best practices of any number of design experts and
references
3) has lost the CyclingNews brand identity
4) has alienated a large part of your core user base

All of these problems could be solved with a followup user interface
redesign project. Yeah, that's big pill to swallow, but here we are.

I'm guessing you four are in a tight spot (because you seem to care about CN
and your users) between your users and good design on the one hand, and
Future publishing on the other. I'm guessing Future Publishing cares nothing
for the above issues because market segment aggregation and other factors
are part of their plan for buying CyclingNews anyhow. I'm also guessing that
the new UI was pretty much ported over from BikeRadar or someplace with no
real high level design attention.

It would be great if you could convince Future Publishing that CyclingNews
captures a unique and separate demographic from BikeRadar and their other
properties, and is thus worth preserving for commercial reasons. And that a
user interface redesign project is well worth the money. Please do that. I'm
sure an analysis of web stats and other data would support that idea.

At least, I hope you may learn from this that users are not simply an
amorphous mass of "consumers" that can be treated as a bubble on a
powerpoint slide.

Or, maybe I'm learning that we are. "
End


Velogirl wrote, from CN forum...

"Hello, I have been reading every one of these posts since 11:30am EDT (I
was working, too. Kind of). As a matter of fact, I am a programmer for a GUI
application that is used by more than 10,000 internal customers, every one
of whom needs to access information quickly, without thinking.

I say that, because I can easily see both sides to this story. As an IT geek
whose main objective it to deliver quality, user friendly content while
delivering the agreed upon requirements of both the business (customer) and
IT (the people who know that performance, maintainability and being easily
updateable - all while upholding the business's (customer's) SLA's (Service
Level Agreement, ei. page load times, retrieval times, etc) is essential.
And, as a cycling geek who read cyclingnews as her #1 cycling news source. I
touch on just 1 argument for each side below, followed by several dislikes
and their respective suggestions/solutions.

1) Upgrading how you store and retrieve data is not only an excellent reason
for a back-end redesign, but an absolute necessity for the amount of
information you have on this website. Moving from 1 million flat HTML pages
(WOW!) to a database is a no-brainer. Database/Data Warehouses are extremely
effective at adding data, creating new data and most importantly -
retrieving data. Great job! You will be able to make this site's information
more robust while being able to easily maintain and add new data!
(My company just spent the last 5 years converting from an antiquated
mainframe with GUI face plate applications to a .NET C# Internet application
that utilizes databases for data storage and retrieval. The first phase was
just elevated to Production this week). I get the effort, blood, sweat and
tears. Really - I do.

2) The back-end is different than the front end (UI, or User Interface). I
agree on both of the following points: a... new readers to websites like
shiny, sparkly, "Flash-y" things, and b...old, long time readers to
cyclingnews loved the no-nonsense format and delivery of the old site.
My personal opinion is that the UI format should be somewhere in between the
old and the new.

A. I like Flash as much as the next, especially pictures and videos. But, I
feel, it is very easy to over-do Flash.
Suggestion: maybe change the shape of the Flash carousel. Make it the width
of the page, but make it shorter. This would be your "header" and the new
shape would make it less distracting. Right now, as I am reviewing the
carousel - I keep glancing down to see the headline links. VG update: this
actually looks recently changed! It is now more lean and thin, rather than
stubby. I like it better. It's not as overwhelming. Or maybe you didn't
change anything and I have just been staring at that page for too long.

B. The general font is "smooshed" and "washed" on the home page.
Suggestion: My suggestions on color would be this...Section titles should be
green or a darkish blue. Under each section title, the links to individual
headline stories and race link should be bold black. They can be un-bolded
once visited.
You can add color elsewhere now that you have a darker, muted color theme
for the important stuff.
My suggestion on font would be Ariel. Although I am biased as this is my
favorite general purpose font. I code in this font I like it so much.

C. Organization: a little cluttered right now. My eyes don't stay on one
section that long before they start looking at other sections.
Suggestion: more defines sections. Although I think the suggested color
scheme may help this immensely. The current color scheme really has a
"washed" effect.

D. Live Coverage report. There is not "latest" or automatic refresh. What I
liked about the old Live coverage was my choice to hit latest and get
automatic updates - OR I could click on the individual "Next" link and read
through the pages on my own until I caught up with the "latest". Very nice
feature. Also, can you put the links back on the bottom? The user needs to
scroll up to click to the next page.

I do want to say that I really do appreciate the effort and dedication you
guys pour into this site. It is by far the best cycling news site out there.
Your passion is obvious and unquestionable.
I also empathize with the issue of needing to follow the requirements of
those making the decisions and realizing that the final end user didn't
share in the joy of the proposed vision or the end result.

One more thing - while I pointed out that the Business actually is the
customer, keep in mind that often the Business thinks about the collective
end user - not always the individual user. I say this because they often do
not place themselves in front of their computer and envision what the
individual user experiences. So, while spoilers in the stage result title
links may seem like a great "news" kind of thing to for people seeking news,
they are not such a great idea for the individual cycling fan coming to the
site to uncover the days peloton news at their leisure.

You guys are doing a great job. Your public reactions have been, overall,
professional and calm. I have snapped for waaaayyy less.
Don't give up on us! We are as passionate as you are!!"
END

And someone pointed out how results should posted, simply like this:
http://www.roadcycling.co.nz/Results/tour-de-suisse-results.html




.

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