In writing my blog posts about WashingtonPost.com, it’s become clear that, while it’s important for websites to incorporate new media elements, such elements need to be useful to and easy to use for the reader.
In an earlier post, I discussed the Post’s apparent failure to incorporate podcasting into its website. It seemed to me that there were two main reasons for this: The content wasn’t unique enough to warrant listening to and the podcasts weren’t prominently featured on the website.
In earlier blog posts, I have discussed WashingtonPost.com’s use of photographs and its design. Recently, the site has increased the number of photographs that appear on its home page, and it’s clear that design principles, such as the “F” pattern, were taken into account when placing the photos on the page.
Every story on the home page that is more than a headline contains a photograph:
Unlike some of its previous incarnations, the current design of WashingtonPost.com is clearly done with how the reader’s eye is drawn in mind.
The site’s homepage uses a three-column format. The first two columns contain the latest news stories and related content. The third, which is clearly delineated from the other two columns, contains: advertising, boxes of the most popular stories on the site, a link to the dead-tree version of the Post and a box that contains the day’s live discussions.