« Exploring Usability Design

Marlowe McCraney

Exploring Usability Design

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Robert Brown
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I found a news website that I finally like. Most of the main news websites are horrid, shameful attempts to bring the news from print to online! Quartz, or qz.com, meets all of these principles and beyond. It is efficient, as it delivers the most important news to you without confusing, derailing, or assaulting you with ads. It's effective, as it delivers the news to the user in a digestible, coherent way. And yes, it reaches full satisfaction. There's nothing more unsatisfying than trying to find some information on a news topic and then having to scroll through like 7 pages of ads, not knowing in some cases what's an ad and what's a part of the website. Check out qz and let me know if you agree. I've been searching for a news site like this one for a while now, and all of my ideas about how to fix the flow of information into something easily digestible and productive fall in line with how they have chosen to operate. 
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  1. Post by Robert Brown
    Re: Exploring Usability Design
    I like the clean homepage! It definitely doesn't feel like it's trying to emulate a newspaper or fill it full of  ads, which is refreshing. It reminds me a lot of Digg's (www.digg.com) homepage, except with more relevant news vs. "what the Internet is talking about."


    You can tell whenever a news site was created by a publication or a tech company by how they lay themselves out. Publications almost always try to mimic the physical publication, while tech companies for better or worse tend to feel like blogs. 

    If you could improve one thing, what would it be?

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  2. Parent of this post↑ Reply to Robert Brown from Marlowe McCraney
    Re: Exploring Usability Design
    I just checked Digg's website out, and I see the similarities, too. However, I think Quartz does a much better job with the spacing and containers of the website. It is so visually satisfying. I just really enjoy Quartz. If they could improve one thing, I think it would be changing the tabs at the top to be more wide-reaching and accessible, instead of trendy catch words. If my grandma can't use the site too, it's not very usable, but I think she would still be able to find her way with the tabs available, she just might have to click around a bit to determine what "OBSESSIONS" really means. 
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  3. Parent of this post↑ Reply to MMMarlowe McCraney from Robert Brown
    Re: Exploring Usability Design
    "If my grandma can't use the site too, it's not very usable" KEY POINT! Always design with your audience range in mind. I always design with my parents in mind - if they're having a hard time with something, I need to rethink it. Otherwise your users will spend too much time trying to figure out something, and ultimately abandon it - and it's hard, nay impossible to get them back once they leave.
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