Eric J. Gruber

LJWorld.com, the award-winning web site of Lawrence’s hometown newspaper The Lawrence Journal-World, launched a new design last Thursday. So far, the feedback has been, well, dismal.

I feel sorry for the web development team. I’m sure it’s difficult to see that your vision isn’t as well-received as I’m sure they hoped. Many visitors report finding the page width too wide, the colors too white and the navigation too clunky.

To be fair, the vast majority of visits made to the sites I’m involved with have a majority of visitors using a screen resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels, with the rest mostly divided between a diverse group of higher screen resolutions. Only a small handful of people are browsing the web on screen resolutions of 800 by 600, so the increase in page width was justified. Although, it seems clear that many weren’t ready for that large of a jump - close to 200 pixels wider - and perhaps they should have split the difference.

The previous design was mostly gray, blue and white, whereas the new design has a lot of white with a little bit of blue. Other major newspaper organizations have similar use of predominately white layouts, but this change has been clearly too drastic for most.

Finally, there is the claim that the navigation is too clunky. Well, I have to agree with the status quo on this one. I’ve tried a few times to find the items that I regularly looked at, and the navigation change has been so drastic that it’s caused me to lose desire in the web site completely.

What will the LJWorld.com staff do? I don’t believe they’ll go back to the well-received and loved older site design. They’ll probably listen to a few comments, make a few slight changes and then push forward. After all, they’re highly skilled experts and know better, right?

Although experts in their field, the LJWorld.com developers have seemingly forgotten about the people that visit the web site. In December 2005, LJWorld.com solicited comments about the redesign from its visitors. It’s almost as if the LJWorld.com staff intentionally avoided most of what was recommended from the December feedback.

The most noted feature on that list? Please, just leave it alone. We love it the way it is.

Redesigns can be great when they address the shortcomings of an existing design, update the look and feel from a long-in-the-tooth look, or when they add new technologies that truly help the visitors.

But when a redesign backfires, especially with a public forum, the results can be a real eye opener. Which makes me wonder; was there any useability testing done before this web site went online?

Me thinks not.

Lawrence is a bit of an odd place for us web workers.

For one, those who do web work in Lawrence are likely doing it with some self-education. The local well-known university has a dismal offering of computer science classes, especially for those interested in web design and development with modern technologies. The last I checked, the classes offered there was on some pretty ancient subject matter.

But tonight I went to the inaugural meeting of the Lawrence Web Geeks (not sure if that’s the official name), which was quite refreshing. It was a good showing for a first meeting - about 25 or so - and it was pretty low key.

Lawrence is kind of weird that way. It’s an artsy community and wonderfully inspiring. Yet, I’m surprised nothing else like this has gotten started before now. I suppose that since the university doesn’t really support teaching its students about modern web development, it was only reasonable to assume it would take a grassroots movement to get thing going.

But at least something has started. I’m certainly glad to be a part of it.