Not another social network or how we decided to create our own social network (Part 2 - organizing the information space on news portals)
In the beginning, I would like to thank everyone who became interested in our project and joined us. As promised in the last post , we continue to broadcast live from the development of the social news network.
In this review, we will look at the problems of organizing information on major news portals. The reason for this post was a comment from claustrofob :
" I was always interested in what the designers and developers are guided by when they make the main jumble of small blocks with articles. When I visit such a site, my head starts to ache, the information is spread across the page, I don’t know what to concentrate on. And This applies to almost any news site.
Tell me, is it really convenient, do they use it? Is there any research on this topic? "
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This comment made us think about how news portals can post information in general.
So what is there? This is the input data, in our case, news on the one hand and users-readers on the other. The meaning of optimization, as always, is that the user should find the news of interest in the most convenient way for him.
There are two possible methods: news categorization and tagging.
At first glance, it can be assumed that both methods are the same, because any category can be represented as a tag, and any tag can become a category. This is partly true. Consider each of them separately.
When categorizing, there is a statistical and previously known catalog of categories-sections, and each news is defined in one of them. The advantage of this method in the systematization and hierarchy. Going from large to small, the user usually finds what interests him, provided that his logic corresponds to the logic of the categorizer.
The disadvantages of this method for news portals are that news can not always be uniquely correlated with only one category. Which category will belong to the news about the exhibition of icons, sponsored by the All-Russian Union of Lovers of Antiquity? It can be either a religion or a society or an art.
And this topic that you are reading now? Is it info design, media on the Internet or is it all worth it to post it in a personal blog? Any decision will be right, but not the same at the same time.
When tagging, news material usually receives several arbitrary tags through which its qualities can be described, for example, the topics covered in it. As a rule, tags describe the material in more detail and in various ways.
But the variety of tags is also their problem. So the same meaning can be described by synonyms (car, car), there is a problem with writing foreign words or names (Google or Google), by the same word different users can understand different meanings (tank as a military machine, tank as a character online games), etc. Without a strict hierarchy, the tags act on equal terms, which makes it difficult for the user to choose.
Probably the only undisputed organization of news is sorting by relevance, and, possibly, by geographical affiliation.
In addition, the question arises whether the user of the news site knows what he is looking for and whether the news site knows what the user is looking for. Both questions can be answered in the negative.
The user comes in the morning for the news, but he does not know what happened in the world since the evening. Maximum he can be aware of their preferences ie news categories. In turn, the news site, as a rule, also does not know what a particular user is looking for.
Their task is to give the fullest possible picture of events, fit a maximum of information on a critical volume of the surface, without knowing the specific preferences of each of their readers.
These reasons cause the flow of information in the form of a large number of small blocks on the main one. On the other hand, the more information, the less the focus of the user, his attention is sprayed and difficult to perceive.
Another submission method is a few large blocks of news. The amount of information is less, but the best perception. This approach may be suitable for portals with a small news flow. Otherwise, news in a wide format will replace each other so quickly that the user will not be able to follow them (for example, on the main one you can fit 4 news blocks, and then 20 news information every half hour).
What do you think is the best way to present information, which one would you prefer and why?
In this review, we will look at the problems of organizing information on major news portals. The reason for this post was a comment from claustrofob :
" I was always interested in what the designers and developers are guided by when they make the main jumble of small blocks with articles. When I visit such a site, my head starts to ache, the information is spread across the page, I don’t know what to concentrate on. And This applies to almost any news site.
Tell me, is it really convenient, do they use it? Is there any research on this topic? "
')
This comment made us think about how news portals can post information in general.
So what is there? This is the input data, in our case, news on the one hand and users-readers on the other. The meaning of optimization, as always, is that the user should find the news of interest in the most convenient way for him.
There are two possible methods: news categorization and tagging.
At first glance, it can be assumed that both methods are the same, because any category can be represented as a tag, and any tag can become a category. This is partly true. Consider each of them separately.
When categorizing, there is a statistical and previously known catalog of categories-sections, and each news is defined in one of them. The advantage of this method in the systematization and hierarchy. Going from large to small, the user usually finds what interests him, provided that his logic corresponds to the logic of the categorizer.
The disadvantages of this method for news portals are that news can not always be uniquely correlated with only one category. Which category will belong to the news about the exhibition of icons, sponsored by the All-Russian Union of Lovers of Antiquity? It can be either a religion or a society or an art.
And this topic that you are reading now? Is it info design, media on the Internet or is it all worth it to post it in a personal blog? Any decision will be right, but not the same at the same time.
When tagging, news material usually receives several arbitrary tags through which its qualities can be described, for example, the topics covered in it. As a rule, tags describe the material in more detail and in various ways.
But the variety of tags is also their problem. So the same meaning can be described by synonyms (car, car), there is a problem with writing foreign words or names (Google or Google), by the same word different users can understand different meanings (tank as a military machine, tank as a character online games), etc. Without a strict hierarchy, the tags act on equal terms, which makes it difficult for the user to choose.
Probably the only undisputed organization of news is sorting by relevance, and, possibly, by geographical affiliation.
In addition, the question arises whether the user of the news site knows what he is looking for and whether the news site knows what the user is looking for. Both questions can be answered in the negative.
The user comes in the morning for the news, but he does not know what happened in the world since the evening. Maximum he can be aware of their preferences ie news categories. In turn, the news site, as a rule, also does not know what a particular user is looking for.
Their task is to give the fullest possible picture of events, fit a maximum of information on a critical volume of the surface, without knowing the specific preferences of each of their readers.
These reasons cause the flow of information in the form of a large number of small blocks on the main one. On the other hand, the more information, the less the focus of the user, his attention is sprayed and difficult to perceive.
Another submission method is a few large blocks of news. The amount of information is less, but the best perception. This approach may be suitable for portals with a small news flow. Otherwise, news in a wide format will replace each other so quickly that the user will not be able to follow them (for example, on the main one you can fit 4 news blocks, and then 20 news information every half hour).
What do you think is the best way to present information, which one would you prefer and why?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/108934/
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