I realized after I posted about Yahoo! Sports that I need to provide a more concrete solution to the design shortcomings that I feel about the new layout. So I decided, why not mock up a little design myself about what could be a cleaner look. I haven't made drastic changes to the home page, but just enough changes that I think a user would like to see. Below is the current home page of Yahoo! Sports. I have highlighted the parts of the Home page that I would make changes to:
Below are the changes that I would make in the new look of the Yahoo! Sports page. Again, I have highlighted the affected portions in red:
As you can see, I placed the ribbon with the different sports back on top as opposed to having a left menu for it. Navigating between different sports scores/stories is one of the big features of a sports website. The current layout of Yahoo Sports has the sports on the left menu below a favorite teams section. Navigating between sports almost always requires me to scroll down and find the sport. Customizing the ribbon also allows for the user to prioritize their favorite sports in the ribbon over the general 'popular sports'. For example, baseball may be huge in certain parts of the US, but I may not care for it to be part of my ribbon. I would want to insert tennis over baseball and as a user, I should be able to have that option.
I strongly think that scores and recaps of games is a big part of the readability of sports websites that users crave for. Having a 3 tabbed right pane that shows you games and their recaps allows for the user to navigate to that easily. Similarly, if you want to see major headlines or headlines only of your favorite teams, you can click on those tabs to view that information.
This look feels cleaner, less cluttered and easy to navigate to than the current look where I find myself scrolling up and down constantly to get to the more important features of sports. This look also allows everything to be centered in the middle (with the absence of a left menu) which could leave room for more advertising if need be. The baseball field background that Yahoo has deployed can also be more visible and add to the aesthetic look of the site with that extra room on the 2 sides. However, I still feel that background needs to be replaced with a lighter background for easy readability.
I have other ideas for some of the other pages on Yahoo! Sports but these would be some of the changes I would start with for the home page. Feel free to comment on what you think the Yahoo! Sports page should look like.
Below are the changes that I would make in the new look of the Yahoo! Sports page. Again, I have highlighted the affected portions in red:
I strongly think that scores and recaps of games is a big part of the readability of sports websites that users crave for. Having a 3 tabbed right pane that shows you games and their recaps allows for the user to navigate to that easily. Similarly, if you want to see major headlines or headlines only of your favorite teams, you can click on those tabs to view that information.
This look feels cleaner, less cluttered and easy to navigate to than the current look where I find myself scrolling up and down constantly to get to the more important features of sports. This look also allows everything to be centered in the middle (with the absence of a left menu) which could leave room for more advertising if need be. The baseball field background that Yahoo has deployed can also be more visible and add to the aesthetic look of the site with that extra room on the 2 sides. However, I still feel that background needs to be replaced with a lighter background for easy readability.
I have other ideas for some of the other pages on Yahoo! Sports but these would be some of the changes I would start with for the home page. Feel free to comment on what you think the Yahoo! Sports page should look like.
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