Re: Interface Usability for online Newspapers and Magazines - help?

"Maira Carvalho" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Hello,
>
> I'm not sure if this is the right newsgroup to post, but, can anyone
> help me?
>
> I need to find any research or article about designing websites for
> big newspaper or magazines - mainly the ones with specific and
> different contents: online-only and offline (what's on the press media
> adapted to the web). So far I've seen a lot about information
> architecture and designing sites for e-commerce and big companies, but
> not applying that knowledge to a news-only website.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated!
>
> Best regards,
> Maira Carvalho

One of my friends did his PhD in this area. He looked in detail at how
people use newspapers in particular, if I remember correctly, he found:
1. People don't 'search' for news - they browse. This is because with news,
people don't know what they are looking for (that's why it's news). So
search engines don't work that well. Not only that, but once attracted by
the headline, people will then read the first sentence or two before
deciding whether to move on or read the whole. So browsing has at least two
stages. In addition, some people will flick through a paper from cover to
cover, then go back and read whatever caught their eye from the first pass.
2. People don't read papers from cover to cover - they have different ways
of reading, depending upon what they are most interested in, and their
knowledge of the layout of the paper. For example, lots of people will have
a quick look at the front page and turn straight to the back page, to look
at the sport. With papers of more than one section, some people will look at
the front page then look at what is in the other section(s), before deciding
what to browse.

Where this leaves you in terms of designing papers, I'm not sure. For #1,
the suggestion was that you include not only the headline, but also the
first sentence or first few lines of the story. For #2, you'll need to take
a look at how papers are typically laid out - or, indeed, how the specific
paper that you are working with is laid out - and model the information on
your home page in relation to that.

Just my 2p.

Ken.