Design is Done, Coding Under Way

By Jeremy Gilbert,
Managing Editor, Innovation & Poynter Online Redesign Project Leader

The design work is done.

The seventh version of Poynter Online has entered its final phase of development.

Incorporating months of feedback and several major iterations, we delivered design mockups last week to our programming team at DataGlyphics, Inc. We created mock-ups of major site areas, including the homepage, linked below, with each mock-up detailing how that part of the site will work.

Feedback from users and colleagues led to the final design. You’ll notice the final design still focuses on our most timely items, just as the initial design did, but in a vertical list instead of a horizontal scroll — as you recommended.

As we shared more of our prototyping process, you asked for more readable type and clearer headline hierarchies — which we worked on. When we discussed our ideas for journalism-focused social-networking, you told us how you wanted niche groups — and we are working to make that happen.

These final design mock-ups show both what the site will look like and how it will work. Our functionality document — along with a style guide listing type sizes, colors and weights — will guide the developers as they build the new site.

The navigation area below provides an illustration of this approach. It shows Most Recent Articles, one of a number of new ways users will be able to sort content on the redesigned site. The functionality document describes this feature:

1.1.1 Most Recent Articles displays the five most recent items posted as articles or blog entries in the Poynter publishing system. It does not include feedback comments or anything posted to Poynter Groups. Clicking More Recent Articles displays 10 additional items, selected in reverse chronology as are the first five showing out front. Display convention: Article headline (limit to two lines with ellipsis as required) Time, month, day, year

This kind of detailed information helps our programmers translate Photoshop images into dynamically functioning Web pages. You can see more of the new site and some of its expected functionality.

While little on the Web is ever really final, these mock-ups and our functionality list are complete — at least for Phase I of the redesign. We may make minor tweaks before launch, but any major changes will have to wait a while.

As the coding proceeds, we’ll be working on features for the new site. Until then we’ll keep you posted, and welcome your feedback.