Earlier this week I participated in a webinar with my dad on the topic of Designing for Mobile. In that presentation I offered 5 principles of mobile design. The very first one argued that news organizations should adopt a “Mobile First” approach when it came to plotting their digital strategy. This is the approach being taken now by all the biggies like Google, Facebook and Adobe. Mobile design guru, Luke Wroblewski, author of the book, Mobile First, shares many great thoughts on this approach on his website, but the key take away I get from him is that adopting this approach forces news sites to really strip their content down to the essentials and focus only on the things that readers want.
It begs the question — why would we do that for mobile and not for desktop websites? Are we saying that even though we know it all can’t possibly be read let’s just throw it on the website simply because there’s more room? The answer is probably yes. Historically, newspapers were the main source for news and information. Before radio and television, newspaper readers devoured every word printed. With the evolution of other media newspapers had to change, and suddenly news briefs appeared on front pages with the assumption that we needed to “hook” readers to get them to the inside. When the internet became popular, the transition for newspapers meant simply putting a version of their front page as the homepage. Same idea though — main story, secondary stories and teasers to other sections of the site. But mobile changed (or should have changed) the game.
The screen is smaller. It takes longer to download large photos or video. The context of use is different as it’s a mobile experience that can happen outside, in line, on the go. We simply couldn’t do the same thing on the mobile website that we were doing on the homepage of a news website. So we stripped down the content to the essential parts that were most important to our users. And suddenly the experience was better. Much better. Suddenly user’s didn’t have to spend 10 minutes looking for the 3 minutes of reading they wanted to do.
Take my hometown news portal, TBO.com. A look at their site map reveals over 100 items on the entire site. I’ve been frequenting this site everyday for years and I was unaware and uninterested in over 80% of this.
Now take a look at TBO’s mobile home screen. Less than 25 items, of which 80% of them are relevant to me.
What’s the impact of this? I engage more with TBO.com through my mobile device than I do through my desktop browser. It’s not that I spend more time browsing the internet on mobile devices. I don’t (not yet anyway). It’s just a better experience. Faster. More convenient and it’s become a part of my daily routine to scour the local news and sports headlines on my smartphone.
There is one site that’s live now that I think that hints at how desktop sites can evolve from the mobile experience. Syracuse.com is not responsive, still feels a bit cluttered (but not too bad) and probably could delete 60% of their content and still be effective. But I love how they structure the main part of the homepage. It’s not the typical homepage we’ve become accustomed to since the mid 1990s. There is no large photo surrounded by secondary photos, leading to more headlines. Instead it’s just a list of the Top Stories at that moment, in real time. 15 of them to be exact, with the option of loading more onto the page. Rather than rely on cumbersome navigation, from a drop down I can load the stories from the topics I want, right there. It’s as close to the mobile experience as I’ve seen. Nothing else on that site is necessary.
Everything is trending towards mobile browsing eventually overtaking desktop browsing. Even at home on the couch more and more people are browsing the web on their mobile devices. So it’s only a matter of time before desktop sites must evolve and align with the habits and behaviors influenced by mobile usage. Just like newspapers have done for decades since radio and TV came on to the scene.
We’re seeing this happen already as Responsive Design is adapted in more newsrooms. But as much as I think this is the answer now and in the near future, I still think the overall desktop browsing experience will evolve beyond fluid grids that adopt to screen sizes. I think the entire browsing experience will be re-thought.
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