RE: [WSG] SMH launch

[Peter Ottery]

hi y'all,   yep, http://www.smh.com.au/ went live this morn. For anyone who has ever read both http://theage.com.au/ (launch mentioned last week) and smh will know they have used the same basic page templates for a few years. The css redesign of both sites has obviously continued that common base - hence the major similarities in layout but some different colour/graphic treatments.   annnyway,   thanks for the early compliments - appreciated - I think there are some unrelated network problems happening at present so if you cant see the site right now that'd be why. hopefully will be fixed shortly. in the meantime I'll take a shot at answering these questions Benvolio  :)   ~ How you identified a redesign was necessary   from a business point of view: they had a long list but briefly, we needed to improve "breaking" news (& making more prominent the amount of content that is updating constantly), make space for different ad formats, be able to make special sponsored sections in a short turnaround, make the whole site faster.   from a design point of view: the site was becoming a bit of a rabbit warren. heaps of content that, at times, was unfindable. the markup was old and we figured we could speed the whole site up using css/xhtml. the visual design was also a bit "loose" - meaning a bit free and easy with lots of differences between different pages. we wanted to achieve something more structured and of a higher quality.   ~ How you got buy-in from the key stakeholders that a redesign was necessary   it was almost the other way around. the key stakeholders have been after a redesign for a long time. resources and many different departments looking for different things in a redesign meant it took a long time to finalise.   ~ What were the target areas you wanted to improve and update   Breaking News: The perception from users was they were unaware when and how often our site updates during the day. sounds like basic stuff but a ticker, a clock, more prominent links to breaking news, and rotating pics are the main improvements here. Dead ends: article pages also had some major problems in that they had 'dead ends' when you finished reading the article (nowhere to go but scroll back up the page or go to another site), so search/more news links/main section links have now been added to bottom of articles. Graphics: consistent style/sizes were needed to tighten the design up More logical navigation: as mentioned, the old site was a bit of a rabbit warren. we've tried (and there's still room for improvement here) to organise these in a more logical fashion   ~ What kind of usability // surveys // focus groups // lab // eye tracking testing you did   basic goal orientated usability testing / focus groups / online surveys / user testing with regular cameras and also groups of users using the site with us watching from behind a 1 way (?) mirror like CSi miami ;-)   ~ How you migrated the templates (you guys use Fatwire as the backend yeah?)   had to ask the tech guys about this one :) Fatwire? yes. templates weren't migrated as such. they were rebuilt from scratch. and the the templates are broken up into little blocks and are common across sites (smh/age)   ~ How you went about browser testing and what browsers you promised the stakeholders you would test for   we have a person dedicated to testing once the page is in the final stages of dev. We do our own testing before a design reaches dev though. we drew the line at IE5 earlier this year - so we promise/support/test in IE 5.0, 5.5 6, Moz 1.5, Firefox 0.8, Mac IE5+, Safari, NS7. Its basically just a numbers game. eg: we dropped support for IE4 because the numbers got low enough and not supporting it means we can be more adventurous with the design/css and concentrate on providing enhancements to the larger % browsers noted above.   ~ How rigorous was your test plan   the dedicated testing person basically has a running sheet of things to test and probs found. its pretty comprehensive but things still do slip thru - that's just web page making :) my testing is basically the same as Russ' and many others on this list recommend - build a small bit - test across browsers, & move on in a modular fashion. you end up with a great knowledge of the reasons behind the errors and can pinpoint probs quickly.   In saying that, probs still come up. things like a problem that has just come up for Moz/FireFox that *don't* have flash installed on the frontpage have unfortunately become apparent after launch and are being fixed shortly. apologies if you are one of those crew. the (flash) breaking news ticker didn't render and caused the layout to do funny things - and yes, we do need to improve the flash code.   ~ How many releases and iterations you did do before final release   there was probably about 15 or 20 decent increments in the initial design phase. can bring some of these to the WSG meeting. In between these though were basically a continuous cycle of updates and improvements. We don't really work in a "release v0.7" fashion. I've been on & off the project since the middle of January though if that gives an idea of the background in lead up to a final release.   ~ What have been the anecdotal responses from users   as mentioned when the age launched, we have a script that loads a wider layout if you have a browser wide enough to display it. essentially a 800x600 layout & a 1024x768 layout.when we launched the age.com.au we had this script set to load the 1024 layout when you browser was at least that wide. we had a decent amount of feedback from users saying they preferred the old "wider" design. We changed the script so that the 1024 layout kicks in when your browser is about 830 wide (and thus gives a horiz scrollbar) so that the user knows there is a wider layout available. I don't necessarily agree with this approach, I personally thought the initial width detection was the way to go, but since we made that change the amount of bad feedback dropped dramatically - so we've kept that for the smh launch.   there's been some lovely praise specifically on the css/xhtml aspect   there's been no emails from IE4 or NS4 (or other browsers that don't support css 2 well) users as far as I know   there's been some feedback from people saying they specifically don't like fixed width layouts, but then others that think its great.   all in all - very little feedback to be honest (which is great). a couple of hundred emails is not much when there's a couple of hundred thousand people a day looking at the pages :)   ~ What are the measurable benefits from the redesign   bandwidth savings: initial stats put the age & smh saving 22%+ on bandwidth solely because of the xhtml/css switch. this will translate into major money savings. advertising opportunities: in the longer term we hope that advertising opportunities will become more attractive for clients due to faster pages/more frequent visitors. so gains in revenue will be partly attributed to the redesign. higher traffic: this one kinda goes hand in hand with the above, but hopefully faster site = happier users = more traffic = more attractive advertising opportunities.   phew. I need a blog... ;-)   as Russ mentioned, keen to catch up for the WSG sydney meeting on june 10   cheers, pete   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Peter Ottery Head of Design f2 Network (02) 8596 4450 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.f2.com.au   -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Ben Webster Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 7:55 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [WSG] SMH launch Hey there Peter,   everyone here at my office has had the day in their calendar to check out the redesign. Now that the redesign has shipped and you can now get your life back... I'd love to hear (if you have time) about the process involved in the redesign.   There was a report from Forrester last year that a large percentage of redesigns make things worse and they cited Macromedia's first iteration as an example. They then went on to praise the second redesign - http://www.macromedia.com/homepage/forrester.pdf    From a process point of view, I'd love to know how you approached such a huge project.   ~ How you identified a redesign was necessary ~ How you got buy-in from the key stakeholders that a redesign was necessary ~ What were the traget areas you wanted to improve and update ~ What kind of useability // surveys // focus groups // lab // eye tracking testing you did ~ How you migrated the templates (you guys use Fatwire as the backend yeah?) ~ How you went about browser testing and what browsers you promised the stakeholders you would test for ~ How rigourous was your test plan ~ How many releases and iterations you did do before final release ~ What have been the anectdotal responses from users ~ What are the measureable benefits from the redesign   mmm - so many questions - so little time. I'm sure you're going to have a busy couple of weeks so I will understand if you ignore such a long list of sticky-beak questions...   I would.   Personally - I love the redesign.   A bienetot, Benvolio   ----- Original Message ----- From: James Gollan To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 7:02 AM Subject: [WSG] SMH launch Hey - why has the SMH site gone haywire in IE6?   Only kidding peter - looks great. That was the big one!   Well done again   James