The NYTimes has added a customization option to the homepage story “feed” box. It’s just one of a series of experimental new offerings that the Times has been rolling out. This one is surprising: I understood the “Most Popular” box to be one of the higher traffic driving elements on the site; odd that they would let users mess with it.

Obviously, the hope is that customization will make the feed even more personally relevant. You can still choose Most Emailed as one of your feeds, but not Most Popular.

Uncharacteristically, the customization user interface has, to my eye, some significant usability problems. It seems to be a classic case of “make it simple” colliding with “provide a lot of options.” At a high level, it appears on the page as a simple 3-step process. But in reality, the entire customization process occurs in the first box (below).

Overall, the interface is presented as a kid of multi-step wizard, but it isn’t really that (here’s the whole page). In fact, you choose your customization options in box 1, these options are subtly revealed in box 2, and step 3 contains the “submit” button to cause your changes to take effect. The user’s selection of a feed from the browse dropdown or from a list of suggestions in the search box (itself a somewhat confusing option) automatically refreshes the preview on the right. If you are happy with your choice, you need to then return to box 1 to “add a tab” that will contain additional headlines. Several issues stand out as potentially problematic. First, the terminology switch from “headlines” to “feed” could be confusing — “feed” is a tech / journalism term that users might not understand in this context. Second, the setup assumes that I may want up to three tabs for headlines or fewer… The option of two, or one, tab, instead of three (big difference?) requires the “add tab” link which requires that the user go backwards in the workflow (from step 2 “preview” back to step 1 “select”) and is, again, a function that assumes too much sophisticiation on the part of the user. Seems that it would have been simpler to require all three tabs to be used. Finally, the addition of the “add to my site” and “create widget” function inside the preview box in step 2 (see below) is an unnecessary distraction that users could mistake for being a part of the headlines customization process.

So, overall, a very welcome customization option that, with some additional simplification of the available options, will provide NYTimes readers with an excellent ability to regularly access the content that interests them the most.

Filed under Finds, Interaction Strategy, Just noticed..., Media, Usability. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.