Online News Visualization
In the world of innovation, the execution is as important as the exercise. If you can’t “sell” the idea with meaningful visualization and functionality, you lose. As part of the AOL Prototyping Team, I learned just how important the “pitch” or execution strategy was to help get support for an idea. One of the last projects I worked on was a blueprint for the future of online news. This included a comprehensive competitive survey, a robust ideation workout and initial visualization exercises. While I didn’t get to see if any of our work will come to fruition (having moved into a new role elsewhere), we stepped into some areas that still haven’t been thoroughly explored.
During the survey phase, we occasionally stumbled across efforts that warranted merit, but not many that were truly pushing the online news experience into the future. AOL itself made some inroads with its dynamic, blog-like approach. USA Today went two-point-oh with a strong emphasis on community (a la Digg), MSNBC has taken some progressive steps and UK’s Times has enriched their visual and user experiences for the better. All said, the jury is still out. Perhaps it hasn’t even been selected yet. Though not necessarily revolutionizing the news experience, but iteratively improving the user experience, the NY Times still reigns champ overall with its powerhouse user base and award-winning infographics.
So the question is where will this sector be in 4 or 5 years? Will we use news in the same way? Will it be highly portable and device-scalable? Will local coverage foster micro-communities? Will we have more immediate and personal relationships with the way we share news? Most likely.
MSNBC (whose blog I recently wrote up) is throwing its hat in the ring by pushing out some fresh visual spins on the old news read. Its Newsware section takes the bold leap of offering up a set of apps that give viewers additional ways to browse and scan their news. Particularly engaging is the Spectra Visual Newsreader, which gives you a set of orbiting color-coded cards featuring stories. You choose a group of categorized stories and it spins them out into a revolving display. Like Digg Labs is doing, clearly MSNBC “gets it” and is allowing space for developing ideas and testing them in a public forum. This is a trend that other news sites, both major and minor, should take up, not just because the next world-class app could emerge, but because it keeps innovation alive and developers on the edge of their seat, focused on pushing the interactive space forward, instead of slapping fancy new labels on old ideas.
Tags: innovation, news, visualization
