Visit nbcnews.com now. The “news” site has 5 headlines. I’m on a Mac with a 1080p display. This is what 5 headlines on a 1080p display looks like:
This is what happens when someone doesn’t get mobile-first.
Mobile-first should mean optimizing the content and design starting with mobile, not starting and ending with mobile. I’m looking at a formerly desktop-friendly news site that is 100% unusable on a desktop device.
This is such a goofy misapplication of mobile-first methodology that it’s goofy.
Let me just say that I wrote a little piece called 52 Question Checklist for Responsive Web Design Projects that was written to prevent goofy misapplications of mobile-first, or responsive web design, exactly like what we see at nbcnews.com. It annoyed a few people. I wonder if any of those people are on the design team at nbcnews.com?
Ok, so the world should design websites mobile-first. We get it. It’s right. It’s “how to build websites” now. But someone in charge of nbcnews.com only read the table of contents to “Mobile-First Web Design for Dummies” (is that a real book?), stopped there, not realizing they didn’t get it. This is Windows 8 all over again. Truly mobile paradigms are….mobile! They don’t translate to desktops! Hasn’t anyone on the design team at nbcnews.com been paying attention…to anything?
Oh well, another day, another deleted bookmark to a formerly relevant or usable site.
BTW: Don’t even click “Search” unless YOU ARE READY FOR SOME SERIOUS SEARCHING! WOOHOO!
You clicked “Search”, didn’t you. You were warned.
The funniest part about the Windows 8 resemblance is that I believe NBC News.com recently RID themselves of the last vestiges of their Microsoft partnership. So that they could transform one of the very best websites on the net into an unusable one. After sixteen years, I’ve just changed my homepage to CNN and there’s no way I’m alone in having done that.
One thing I’ve learned on the web is that when a website dies, just move on. Don’t even grieve. Just move on. Greats sites, once they have an epic misfire, rarely if ever resurrect to any semblance of former glory. Look at Digg. What is that now? Some sites handle changes in user paradigm well, and they survive to see the next change. Some sites miss it big time and never come back.
There is something desperate in this volley for trendiness that missed the point of the trend – greater usability, focus on content, greater readability. It tossed all that out the window.
It’s also ironic that the most boring if not ugly site in the whole world sits by, works on any platform, ignores all the trends, hasn’t changed in 15 years, is the number one news aggregator, has tiny pictures, yet remains front and center on desktops and smartphones worldwide, etc.: Drudgereport.com