An avid sports fan? Eager to read the latest article on your sports idol? The New York Times has a large database of sports articles, the latest scoreboard updates, and even sports schedules, making it easy for one to read up on stats and team matchups. But, that is all a waste if one can’t easily navigate through it’s mobile app. Don’t get me wrong, the sports tab, along with all the sections tabs, were clear to find. However, once you’re in the sports section, it’s hard to navigate based on the type of sports. Unlike the NYTimes website, where each sport has its own tab, the mobile app lacks this. Instead, the layout of the sports page includes a long list of top sports stories and a row of links that leads you to respective sports results and schedules. It is difficult to see articles related to a specific sport, as all articles are jumbled together. It just takes an extra row of tabs to make it more user-friendly.
The current layout is designed to have its main focus on the top stories and sports results. With the long list of top stories and the row at the top for “schedule and scoreboard”, it makes sense that the app is designed this way. However, when trying to read articles other than these top stories, it’s quite hard to find other related articles or further details on scores. Say a person wanted a quick recap of a tennis match, navigating through the “tennis home page” is not the easiest.
Constraints guide the design process. In a mobile app, screen size is a huge constraint, as this limits what one can and cannot see. Another NYTimes app constraint is probably cost. The front page, trending articles and most popular pages are better designed and more aesthetically pleasing. But, as you go through the multiple layers into the live scoreboard page, the aesthetics diminishes quickly. Not only are there no images and no icons, but the page is not designed efficiently, as one would need to click through an unnecessary number of links. Furthermore, with similar text and font size, it’s hard for users to recall and go through all the links efficiently.
The designer probably knew this was the place to cut back on money, since one could probably google the scores more quickly than dig through the various pages in the NYTimes mobile app. So why do people end up on this page in the first place? The answer is probably not for scores, but to want to read more on a certain athlete, team dynamics, historic games… something more newsworthy.
I have constantly attempted to look for specific tennis articles, or quick basketball recaps, but have struggled through the NYTimes app due to the lack of sport specific tab. With this easy improvement, the sports section of the app would then be a lot more user-friendly, and with a more streamlined process to get to where you want to be, the app may be used even more frequently as well.
