What’s the big idea behind our redesign?
Today, we’re excited to debut a new look-and-feel for the Daily Dot. We launched in 2011, which doesn’t seem so very long ago, and yet the world has changed dramatically. Since then, the Internet has decentralized (and decapitalized!) to the point that it is increasingly woven into every aspect of our everyday lives. Less and less do we “log on to the internet.” More and more, people such as ourselves and our readers are already there from the moment we wake up in the morning. (Well, and if you use Zeo, then even while you sleep.)
We saw an opportunity to be ready for the internet of tomorrow, and to do that, we needed a site that incorporates several key attributes: adaptability to both the way news unfolds on the internet now and the way our readers use the web and absorb information; elegance in design that presents our coverage with the originality and authenticity that characterizes our editorial; and sheer power under the hood, to help us bring you the news you most want to see at any given moment. — Arsenio Santos, Chief Product Officer
Why redesign?
While we’ve been continually tweaking and improving our look and feel, we haven’t done a major design overhaul of our website in over three years. During that time, the news landscape has been evolving fast, and we see a not-too-distant future that outstrips our existing infrastructure’s ability to adapt. More people than ever are getting their news on their smartphones and tablets, and a dizzying array of news organizations have sprung up in response.
Further, our own approach and coverage has evolved. Our focus at the Daily Dot has been (and continues to be) the emergent communities that call the internet their home. And while we set out to create a hometown news organization for those communities, our work has evolved along the way into building a living history for and about those communities. We wanted a fresh design to support the ways that storytelling is evolving.
One byproduct of the evolution of our coverage is our unique voice. Digital news organizations know the importance of having a strong, consistent voice as a way of connecting with their audiences while also reinforcing their brand identity. But a funny thing happened over the past five years: We found ourselves speaking increasingly with two distinct voices. We’re as proud of our critically acclaimed investigative work on cybersecurity as we are of our coverage (and suffocation) of the “dat boi” meme, and we think that dichotomy fits well with the nature of the internet itself, a place vast and full of complex emotions and contradictions. We wanted to evolve our design to embrace that contrast, and to visually support all of our conversations, whether they’re wise or whimsical.
Laying the groundwork
Before looking at design concepts, we wanted to get feedback on our existing site from real readers. So we conducted in-person user interviews during which we asked very open-ended questions to discover any common trends or recurring perceptions that we weren’t internally aware of about how our readers felt about the existing Daily Dot website.
We also had readers take part in a series of cardsorting exercises. The exercise had two components. First, each participant was given a list of our current section names, and asked to rearrange them however they saw fit. Then, the participant was given a stack of several dozen article tiles (each with a headline, description, and lead art), and asked to place the tile in the section that made the most sense to them.
The results of these facilitated tests taught us a lot about the way readers feel about our sections, and we were sometimes surprised by the disconnect between our preconceived notions and what users told us. The evidence suggested that a section reorganization could go a long way toward making the Daily Dot feel more intuitive and welcoming to our audience; what better way to reveal a new section scheme than in coordination with a site redesign?
While we were wrapping up the user testing interviews, we also worked with a conversion rate optimization specialist to take a closer look at our existing analytics data. We used machine learning techniques to establish a baseline of user behaviors on our site. This led us to begin a series of content experiments last fall and winter. The A/B tests showed us that we could make changes to our article pages and homepage that would give readers a better experience.
We already knew from our analytics that we needed to reconceptualize our website with a mobile-first design. Three-quarters of our traffic comes from smartphones and tablets, and we wanted a design process that respected that reality and started with mobile and built up, rather than the more traditional approach of graceful degradation from desktop web design.
Through our experimentation and analysis, we also learned we could do a lot better with discoverability. We wanted to make it easier for readers to find other articles that would inform and entertain them. Our previous method for aiding discoverability — listing all of our content below an article — was paradoxically offering too many options and no clear guidance on what avenue a reader should pursue after finishing an article. We decided that we needed a less-is-more approach, coupled with more opportunities for our Editorial team to curate a guided reading experience.
The design process
With our marching orders in hand, we started working with Wondersauce, a design agency whose work and process felt like a natural fit for us thanks to their dedication to deep research, digital culture, and understanding of our ambitions. They spent weeks interviewing our teams, learning about our unique coverage, our growing knowledge base, and our aspirations and challenges. And then Wondersauce got to work with design concepts, wireframes, and mockups of various pages. Each design presentation contained not just the design deliverables, but explanations and deep thinking behind their choices. Wondersauce solicited feedback from us at every turn. We strove to collect enough feedback to be productive without designing by committee.
While Wondersauce offers development services in addition to their design expertise, we decided to keep the development work in-house, leveraging our Product team’s proficiency and experience with the existing website codebase. Once the design was finalized, our developers set out to turn the mockups into reality.
Last week, prior to the launch, we put a preview link on our website, and offered the world a sneak peek of the redesign. We were too excited to keep it to ourselves any longer, and we wanted additional feedback directly from our users and readers, who helped us locate unforeseen design glitches or server problems.
The results
The first thing you’ll notice about our new website is the new look-and-feel. We’ve got a distinctive new headline font: Larish Neue. We are the largest publication to use it, and we think it manages to convey both the importance of what we cover — how the internet is changing the world is the most important story in the world today — and the internet nerdiness with which we cover it.
Along with the new headline font, we’ve reorganized our sections. Here’s a look at what’s coming.
What’s less obvious is a new hyper-dynamic architecture that gives new life to how we organize information at the most fundamental levels. As new trends emerge and our coverage of them heats up, our new topics system can detect when a tag is growing in popularity, and our CMS can prompt editors to promote a tag into higher prominence on the website, as well as to restructure our coverage in real time as a story continues to evolve. The goal is to remove any friction readers may find when looking for articles on the topics they don’t want to miss.
On article pages, we’re beginning to offer more highly articulated ways of embedding rich content to enhance the narrative. Components like pull quotes, videos, and social media can expand when they are pivotal to the story, or contract when they are tangential. We have also redesigned and are varying article templates to showcase great original artwork and video content. We’re excited to start using our “super feature” template for the great in-depth reporting and longform articles that make our site a destination for those following internet culture.
You will also notice that we’ve got clear suggestions for what to read next at the end of every article, related by section or trending topic.
The redesign just went live today across our site. In the coming hours and days, we are excited to see just how readers approach these new streamlined paths toward the information they are looking for right now on their cellphones, from their tablets, and while taking that short work break on their desktops. The internet and our readership are growing and changing, and so are we. The future of the internet that is always around us, that we are constantly immersed in, is an internet that is also increasingly very personal. The infrastructure and design that we released today provides us with the foundation to be an integral part of that future and deliver your news about life online in the best way for you. We hope you enjoy.
