The proof of the site is in the reading (digital web mag redesign)
Monday, May 24th, 2004Last week one of the most repeated items in the blogosphere was the release of the redesigned Digital Web Magazine (one of my favourite sites btw).
I must admit that on first look I didn’t like it. I thought it looked a bit blah, especially compared to the stronger previous visual design. But who am I to say – I have little visual design skill, so I wasn’t going to comment (especially when everyone else was saying how fab it was
So why am I commenting now? Well something interesting happened during the week. I all of a sudden started to use the site a whole lot more. I discovered articles that I had missed first time ’round. I’d read one article and then follow it to another. I read the news from the screen instead of my RSS reader.
Why did this happen? Well, I truly believe that it was the improved IA. The listing of articles by topic is excellent – mostly well grouped, and much easier to find interesting things. It is easier to see what a particular author has written (providing an easy way to see articles that might be related), and the list of articles by title shows the breadth of content very well.
So the proof of the site is in the reading, not in the looking…