Design and layout inspiration

In my last post I talked about our target audience 18-30 years olds. In my research I have come across a site who’s layout I think will really appeal to this user group.

http://newsmap.jp/

I think the layout of this site is great!!!! Firstly, it presents information in a visually appealing way. It is color blocked into different sections so it is easy to navigate. And when you run your mouse over each headline a box appears on the screen with a brief summary and related picture. There is even an option at the bottom of the screen that enables the user to select the topics they want to view on screen.

This is great because internet users (and especially our target user group) are working in an information-soaked world. Data from Neilson shows that in the US (and presumably this is similar world wide) people visit 2 554 pages per moth but only spend an average of 56secs on a website.

Another thing that I really liked is that the website is constantly updated and different shades of colors are used to depict things posted less then ten mins ago, more than ten mins ago and more than an hour ago. This will appeal to our target users as it mimics social networking feeds.

I know not all of these ideas will be practical to put into action on our website. For instance we cant keep updating every ten minutes (unlike news web we cant just source stories from other sites and post them on our own) – but we should consider a way in which the website can be updated and kept current. We could defiantly consider organizing our information into different sections in a way that is visually appealing.

Some possible categories into which we could organize information:

· different instances where social media has played a role in civil unrest

· Or possibly even separating into features, opinion pieces, interviews, background info and video and images.

PS - If you are interested here is a short video explaining how Newsmap works.