On Thursday 6 December Journalism.co.uk will be running its next digital journalism conference, news:rewired – digital stories. One of the sessions planned for the day will look at site design, user experience and news readability, with speakers including Martin Belam, principal consultant, Emblem; Grig Davidovitz, co-founder, RGB Media; Kate Ortega, deputy graphics editor, The Wall Street Journal and Marc Downer, user experience consultant, Adido.
Ahead of the conference we’ve compiled some related reading (and listening) for delegates interested in learning more about user experiences in digital news, the approaches being taken by some news outlets and what recent research has revealed.
First of all, delegates might like to take a look at this Journalism.co.uk feature on building a good user experience for news sites. The main eight tips outlined in the article include:
- Carry out effective audience research
- Avoid ‘information-overload’
- Offer a rewarding and shareable experience
- Offer explainers along the way
- Build clear and uninterrupted journeys
- Embrace the liveness of news
- Make the experience one-of-a-kind
- Have a clear voice and offering
There is also a podcast covering similar topics, produced by Journalism.co.uk, at this link.
To get an idea of the different approaches taken by news outlets, here is a collection of Journalism.co.uk reports on just some of the digital redesigns from 2012.
- The Global Mail redesign: Scrolling and content hierarchy
- New Channel 4 News site gets ‘under the skin’ of the newsroom
- ITV News launches new site in beta
- BBC News rolls out responsive site to mobile
- Guardian unveils ‘work-in-progress’ responsive beta site
- Why the Express and Star went ‘mobile-first’ and responsive
- Students relaunch Redbrick as responsive site
- ITN relaunches as responsive design ‘video-rich portal’
Other useful resources and reads:
- The Currybet blog by Martin Belam – who is joining the news:rewired panel in December – is a useful resource for user experience related content
- Poynter’s latest eye-tracking research shares some useful findings on how consumers interact with news on tablet devices
- The BBC Internet blog featured a post on the Olympics, user experience and design earlier this year
- In this Journalism.co.uk feature co-founder of RGB Media Grig Davidovitz – who is also speaking at news:rewired – talks about ‘the news show’ and his lessons for digital journalism design
- 10,000 Words shares ’10 web design tools for journalists: CSS3, responsive design and rapid prototyping’
- Kevin Anderson on ‘increasing reader engagement through better journalism experiences‘
There are still some tickets left for the one-day conference, so if you would like to attend buy yours for just £130 (+VAT) at this link. Lunch and refreshments will also be provided, as well as networking drinks afterwards.
There is also a news:rewired PLUS ticket option for just £310 (+VAT), which includes both a day’s intensive training on the Wednesday (5 December) and the day-long conference on the Thursday (6 December). Delegates can choose one of three two options for the day of intensive training: Introduction to Data Journalism, run by Paul Bradshaw; Online Media Law, run by David Banks or Advanced Online Research Skills, run by Colin Meek (Advanced Online Research Skills now sold out).
You can buy either of these tickets at this link. If you select a news:rewired PLUS ticket we will contact you to confirm which training course you would like to attend on the Wednesday and provide further details. Space on these training courses will be limited and running of them will be subject to demand.
