Case Study Two - A Good Interface

For my second case study, I have chosen to use a website that I refer to multiple times on a daily basis. One of the reason's that I consistently use it, is because it is easy to navigate, and has many good features about it. This website is a news source website known as "News Now", and I always use to it keep up to date with all of the latest football gossip. However, it also has news sources on a large range of worldwide events and issues, along with current events for each country, and doesn't just focus on the sporting industry. In this case study, I'm going to go through and name all of the features that make me continue to use this website, rather than jumping ship and looking for another, more effective source of news.

The screenshots I have taken for this case study have been taken from http://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Sport/Football/Premier+League/Chelsea.

Firsty, although the layout isn't the most appealing (a screenshot is shown below), the functional aspects of the site is very, very good. For a starter, as we generally read right to left and top to bottom, it makes sense to have the "News Now" logo in the very top left hand corner. It's been linked so that if you click on the logo, it takes you back to the News Now Homepage. It is easy to be aware of the fact that you can click on the logo, as the cursor shape changes to a hand icon with a pointed finger, indicating that it is 'clickable'.

Below that, as you can see in the screenshot, is a row which shows all of the sub-categories that have been accessed in order to get to the page you are currently on. So for example, in the screenshot I am searching for news about "Chelsea" (an English football team). They play in the Premier League (hence the sub-category just before 'Chelsea'), they play Football, and Football is a Sport. If I wanted to go and look at news related to football as a whole, it's as simple as clicking on the label "Football". When you hover the mouse of it, the cursor again changes to a hand symbol, while the label itself becomes underlines, a further indication that a click of the mouse will take you there.

On the left, I have inserted another screenshot, of the side bar on the left hand side. It is a very well designed interface, as it has an option to search for keywords, along with search via the drop down menus. Below the search bar, are the labels from the top of the page (the sub-categories) in a drop down form. This is extremely helpful as if I want to go read about another team in the Premier League, rather than click on the 'Premier League' label at the top, and then find the team on that new page, I can do it all in one go, by hovering the mouse over the 'Premier League' label on the left hand side bar, and then the drop down menu will come up with a selection of all of the teams.

Along with that, if you would like to narrow your search down to subcategories within 'Chelsea' such as 'Injuries and Suspensions' or 'Transfer News', you can do so via the side bar menu. Further sub-categories can be accessed by the drop down menus in tabs such as 'Midfielders' which then lets you choose exactly which football player you would like to read about. The drop down menu has also been well-designed so as you move your cursor over to it, you have plenty of time to highlight the category you want, as some poorly designed sites have drop down menus which disappear before you can even move your mouse to where you want. Again, the cursor turns into a hand, while the label that you are hovering on top of turns blue with white, underlined writing, making your selection extremely obvious. The left hand side bar is one of the features that I use the most in order to navigate my way between different news sources.

In the above screenshot, is another feature that I really like. When you click to
 read an article, it automatically opens that article in another tab, rather than in the one you are currently using. That way you don't need to keep on going back once you have finished reading the article, and you can also have multiple articles loading simultaneously this way. Once you have opened an article, the title of the article on the main 'News Now' page will turn to a green colour, indicating that you have previously opened this link. This feature is very helpful when I am reading a lot of articles in a day, as if I come back to the site later on in the day, I can easily see which articles I have already read, and which ones I am yet to read so far.

On the left hand side, is a snippet of the right hand side of the website. Another toolbar. In this section, it shows you the most read stories from the last 24 hours, along with the previous top stories. I really like this, as if I haven't been on the site in a day or two, I can easily look down into these two columns and see which articles are recommended to catch up on and read. When you go to click on a link, the cursor again turns to a hand, and the text becomes underlined. Below each article, it says the name of the source, so you can choose functions such as 'hide publication', if it's one that you don't necessarily want to see continuously popping up. If you go to click on that link, the text turns red, and also becomes underlined.

Again, the link then turns blue once you have opened it, to indicate that you have already opened that link.

On the left hand side, is a screenshot of another section of the page. This is located just below the sections "Top Stories" and "Previous Top Stories"

This has been designed to show the stories in which you have most recently read. This is helpful in case you are looking to find the article again, yet it has disappeared off of the main home page. This section shows the 10 most recent, and there is an option to get rid of these, if you don't want the page to show them. To do so, you click on the red cross on the right hand side of the article.

Last but not least, I want to talk about another smaller functions in the thin screenshot above. This is at the very bottom of the page. There are a few links that you can click in order to contact News Now, subscribe to their articles, and various other options like that. However, there is also a feature that they have incorporated which auto-refreshes the page every few minutes, and the timer down the bottom tells you how long is left until the next auto-refresh. I find this helpful, in certain circumstances like on transfer deadline day, when there is only a few minutes left of the transfer market, and you are dying to see if your club signs any new players. The auto-refresh refreshes the page and brings you the latest batch of news every couple of minutes without the click of a button, so it can continuously reel in more news, even while you only have the tab open in the background.

Another aspect that I like about this site, is the variety that it sources to the public. It gives the reader multiple choices of which article they would like to read, and notifies them of which website it has come from. I find this helpful as some sites, such as 'Daily Mail' and 'Sky Sports' for instance, are more reliable than 'Vanguaard' from over in Nigeria.

So overall, due to the extremely good functional qualities of this site, I continue to use it to keep me up to date with the most recent football news. If the interaction wasn't as positive, I am sure that I would look elsewhere for a better functioning site. This goes to show that the ease of interaction is a key part of a users experience, and plays a big part in their decision of whether or not they want to continue using this interface. In all honesty, good interface designs almost make you return to them without consciously thinking "I'm going to use this interface because it's very functional'. However, a poorly functioning interface immediately makes you blame the difficulty of use, and poor interface design for your bad experience. By creating a case study on this interface, it has actually make me consciously aware of how good it really is.