E-Media Tidbits

DailyCamera.com As the Boulder (CO) Daily Camera's redesigned home page indicates, tooltips present more usability problems than they solve.

This morning my colleague and fellow Boulderite Justin Crawford and I were chatting about the redesign of the Boulder Daily Camera site, which debuted back on Oct. 30, 2006.

Crawford pointed out something that bugged him: On the site's home page there's a list of headlines for current stories. At the top of that list is this instruction: "Tip: Hold your mouse over a headline to view more information."

That's right, the Camera evidently believes it's necessary to explain such a common, basic Web interface feature as tooltips. I agree with Justin: this bugs me too. Good user interface design should be intuitive, and not require explanation.

I realize that total online newbies may not be familiar with tooltips (although users of Microsoft Office and other common software would be familiar with a similar mechanism, balloon help). However, I think the Camera's tooltip approach to providing home page story blurbs doesn't solve the real problem its layout presents: crypticness.

Online headlines should be intuitive, not cryptic, vague, or leading. That is, simply by reading a headline you should be able to grasp what a story's about. A well-crafted online headline provides the reader with sufficient information and incentive to decide whether to click a link to read the story.

Therefore, I think the Camera would be better off putting more effort into crafting effective online headlines, rather than relying on a cumbersome, ineffective fix like tooltips. The usability problem with how the Camera design employs tooltips is that this approach requires user action (moving a mouse) merely to get enough information to decide whether to click. That kind of decision literally should be possible at a glance. It should involve the eyes, not the hands.

For instance, two of today's Camera headlines are: "Erie residents seek a reprieve" and "Business backs colleges." Neither headline really says what the story's about. Online, that's not engaging or effective.

However, those are the same headlines which ran in today's print edition of the Camera. So either the Camera's content management system cannot (or is not configured to) accommodate different headlines for online vs. print, or the Camera has made a deliberate decision that online headlines must match what runs in print. Neither circumstance serves the online audience well.

How is this issue handled at your paper or magazine? Do your online headlines match your print headlines? If so, why? And if not, why not? Please comment below.