Keeping in line with ergonomics - A first look

Managing a website parallel to a newspaper is no small task and the team behind www.telegraph.co.uk knows it. Being one of the papers with most circulation in the UK, The Daily Telegraph has managed to confront one of the bigger issues that stems irrevocably from the very nature of the web: audience lifespan.

With everyone browsing a website for no longer than a couple of minutes, it's crucial to make the user feel at home, extending his value to the media in the process. The quality of actual news coverage, while important, doesn't have as big an impact as a well crafted, well designed layout. The content is by itself useless if its vehicle isn't doing the job. What we're talking about is ergonomics.

THE ONLINE NEWSPAPER

The homepage of The Daily Telegraph's web portal is sleek and clean, but also full of information. At a first glance, there's no
clear structure behind what seems to be a digital broadsheet-newspaper. Although if the user manages to look for the header, he'll be pleasently surprised.





Themes are relegated into distinct sections and each one includes several subsections. For instance, the "news" section houses sections divided into the UK and the rest of the World, politics and celebrities, education and science, and so on. This system is nothing new when looking at local websites. It does stand out, however, when one enters a bigger subsection.


Right now, the politics subsection is accompanied by what seem to be tags, all closely related to the Prime Minister and his coalition. If the user still feels that "politics" is way too broad an are to browse in, he can narrow down the content with the tags given to him. What's interesting here is how relevant these sub-menus are to recent news coverage. In fact, it's safe to say that these sections are swapped out as soon as the focus of news coverage changes. Let's take a look at the world section:

Notice that the president of the US has his own section? This is proof to the somewhat dynamic nature -in terms of tags- of The Daily Telegraph. And that structure shows in the rest of the webpage. A user will be able to choose between the "latest of Barack Obama" and "Blogs on Barack Obama" (written by Telegraph staff), but they'll also be able to check on his approval ratings and read articles analyzing these numbers. Even health has its set of unique news chains, with "Swine flu" standing out as the most relevant. In terms of ergonomics, it seems as if every section covers a distinct purpose, and that with a clear sense of relevance.

KEEPING IN TOUCH

The thorough use of tags isn't the only thing noteworthy of this website. Hovering back to the UK section and selecting an article, the user is prompted with several options so that he or she can "share" the article.

The first few options are social networks like StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter. In addition to that, every article is bound to a set of themes that help the reader stay connected to the news that he or she has chosen. RSS feeds are there, next to every article, which allows for a more specific subscription to each specific topic.

Rolling back to our previous example with the President of the United States, Barack Obama has his own feed too, as does the Swine Flu and Nick Clegg.

With the 33 chilean miners getting so much attention around the world, we decided to put this reliable system to the test. Using the search function (adequately placed on top of the header), we got to today's news article regarding the miners. The results?



"Chile" is the only local feed available, which contradicts the heavy influx of miner-related news on the website. This lack of integration is a major stepping stone in terms of ergonomics, as it hinders a fluid transition in between related news. Perhaps integrating the community more would establish a more secure foothold for smaller (but equally important) news? At least that's something that we'd prefer to see.


Stay tuned for an in depth analysis of the miner debacle on Workshop's Telegraph!