USAToday releases redesign to boo’s and hisses

USAToday recently released its new redesign. While the site touts numerous improvements, it instead has mostly garnered snide comments (which, in bad form, required a lengthy user sign-up to "join the community"). To eloquently summarize user "chuck sample" "The new site honks."

What is interesting, however, is that most of the comments are not lambasting all the nifty social features such as allowing users to recommend stories, "join the conversation" with comments, and create a personal space with an avatar. Rather, they are complaining about the homepage layout and how it is actually harder to find information on it. The sins? Let's just listen to the folk's comments using the new social features. Users are creating profiles solely to post negative comments regarding the site.

• "We shouldn't have to scroll down "4 pages" for content on any page "
• Most folks "do not" want to have 50 to 60% of the page taken up by a USAToday banner and membership/login garbage.
• It was a concise menu of the news. Now it's mostly white space, with undiffentiated small, dull type spread out over about 4-5 pages I have to scroll through.

They also state they have made "other basic improvements. We've cleaned up the layout, simplified the navigation, improved 'search', and made it easier to find related stories." Noted improvements to the search are creating a "six degrees of separation" for each news article and including photos with search results. So how are the editors spinning this? Below are some of the benefits they list.

• Scan other news sources directly on USATODAY.com;
• See how readers are reacting to stories;
• Recommend stories and comments to other readers;
• Comment directly on stories;
• Participate in discussion forums;
• Write reviews (of movies, music and more);
• Contribute photos;
• Better communicate with USA TODAY staff

Hopefully the editors planned to truly consider this feedback with an iterative design. No one gets it right the first time, and thankfully USAToday as a lot of very vocal readers.