Interactive Inspiration: New USA Today Site
Interactive Inspiration:
New USA Today Site
I don't think I ever read USA Today or even visited the newspaper's website. Actually I never really had much of an opinion of USA Today, if anything I simply thought of it as the traveling person's newspaper. A few weeks back though a colleague directed me to their newly redesigned website and now they've turned themselves into a form of inspiration.
The site features a intuitive interactive model influenced by the iPad's page flip model seen in apps like iBooks, Newsstand and Flipboard. This new tablet-like navigation eliminates the feeling associated with traditional navigation models that you are leaving one page and waiting for another page to load. All the content feels like it is encased within the browser and at your disposal. Everything loads up quite quickly when jumping from section to another. It's very innovative for an in browser experience.
Another awesome feature is what they refer to as "cover view" mode. This allows you to view high quality photos that fill up the entire browser and flip between each of them. I would definitely bet this treatment for viewing and displaying photos will become more prevalent on news websites.
The site also features live video coverage, easy user-controls for customizing pages and new interactive weather mapping. From a design standpoint, the layout is clean, employs lots images to convey a sense of visual storytelling and one of my favorites is the site's use of color within the navigation. Color coding the different sections with the navigation has become an emerging trend in web design as it allows users to associate a certain color with a certain piece of content.
Whether you like the new design and tablet-like experience or not, the site has definitely given the USA Today brand some personality which can go a long way — especially for a person like me who has gone from barely acknowledging their existence to now thinking of them when I'm looking for a little inspiration.
