大象传媒

Lack of customisation. Again.
I'm not interested what others are reading, I'm interested in News for my nation, and Local news.

See ya 大象传媒. I's been great for years, but I'm offski.

On your screen shots above, I can read "sign in" in the mobile masthead. On my iPhone I do not see that. Can you tell us what are the plans with the 大象传媒 ID, will we be able to customise to see regional news, personal interest areas, etc. Like said above, I am not interested what is Most read, I have my own interests. Customisation is so enormously important, and this is the fifth launch in a row where we do not see a proper customisation using the 大象传媒 ID option. A missed opportunity, that hopefully was an oversight that is corrected with the next update.

As I just posted to the previous post from C Russel, I really like the new site.

But is it just me that thinks that it's odd that, in the photo, the device with the largest screen space (ie the iPhone's "retina" resolution in full-screen) shows the least content? (and vice versa). Weird....

This is quite a step back for me. I am a BlackBerry 7 user, in Canada. The new layout has much lower density of information and looks more like other sites like CNN. In other words, it's now become infotainment rather than news, which is what I appreciated 大象传媒 for. I might as well switch to CNN or any of the other sites that use this glitzy layout.

This is really rather good, particularly when compared with the Android news app, which has never worked properly (images never load). It loads quickly and is quick to navigate.

The articles themselves are fine, but my front page has gone from being able to see 7 to 8 headlines to being able to see three. Too much room is taken up with things that I don't want to see or use like weather or a link to the iPlayer. Customisation, more information and lower bandwidth is needed, frankly I might have to go back to a text based RSS feed...

Why ruin a perfectly good site. Before the change I could quickly brows the main headlines without having to scroll. Now all I can see is a massive banner header, one headline and half of a picture. I have to scroll for ages to get to the lesser stories. Smaller text and more headlines on screen please.

What on earth have you done???

The site was great before - simple text in a list - fab!

Now there are pointless pictures everywhere, the list of headlines seems to take 5x the screen real-estate that it did before (need to scroll down about four screens to see headlines that fitted comfortably in much less than one screen before). Really, what were you thinking?

"ruin a perfectly good site" - yes you have.

I'm using a Galaxy Tab with 7" screen. How bad would it be on a smaller screen???

Some pretty mixed opinions here, it seems. But for what it's worth, I like it. I was a bit surprised when I first saw it this morning, but warmed to it really quickly,Clean, attractive, very helpful to have a one-line summary under the headline, and the photos are clearer now too. And as for having to scroll down the page to see the content - well gee, I'm viewing the site on a cellphone with a couple of inches of screen. I guess I'm *expecting* to have to scroll to see anything worthwhile, so it's not really a problem. Good job, 大象传媒!

Can't be as bad as what you did to this main site... apart from the homepage to check the headlines, I can't even be bothered to click on anything on this site these days.

I'm afraid this is another (very) negative view. I'm sure it's a thankless task - changing popular sites. I also assume you think we'll get used to it (my use of the PC version of the 大象传媒 site has gone way down since the messy changes to it). The previous site: easy to avoid what I'm not interested in and to get at what I am interested in - news, world news and not sports and a lot of clicking and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling! And I have a big screen! Please allow us to customise so we can avoid all of the BIG stories you think we want to see and select at a glance (without all the scrolling, pictures and blank space) what we want to see. As noted by another writer, the accessibility that made the 大象传媒 site great is gone and it now feels like a lot of others. If it wasn't broke, why 'fix' it?

Oh Dear, what a waste of your time. If it aint broke dont fix it. Whoever designed this needs to move on to comic book illustration.
I don't need images on the front page ..........I want Headlines.
Slower to load, difficult to navigate, far to much time wasted scrolling around to find interesting articles.
It's a no from me

Really!

Why do you insist on taking amazingly usable sites and ruining them.

I would echo some thoughts from above, far too much importance placed on images. As with the other sections of the site, you seem to be obsessed with pushing image or video content to the detriment of the text based content. Are you really so out of touch with why users visit the site, we want to read the quality content you provide.

The old mobile site was the perfect size for the iPhone. Additionally, adding images to a mobile site will slow it down if you are actually viewing it over a mobile connection rather than a wireless connection.

First the homepage, then the sports site and now the mobile site, all made less usable. I would be surprised if any views here are acted upon though as thousands of complaints have been ignored on the other "improvements".

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Who wants everyone to 'share' what I look at on the 大象传媒? I can't think of anything more boring, both to me and to anyone else! And as for looking at what other people are looking at, why? I'm a fully grown adult person who doesn't need help to look at a 大象传媒 News website. The original format was perfectly understandable, compact and easy to read. Of course, these days EVERYTHING has to be graphical - is this because young kids can't read any more? Sad, really sad that the 大象传媒 are going so 'commercial' where money seems to rule everything. The good days of reliable and honest news coverage seems to be gone, and now 'bling' is everything!

I feel that you are getting as 'need to be new regardless' as facebook is with its Timeline. That in itself is the most hideous, disfunctional, user interface I have seen to date.

Please dont ANY further without CONSULTATION with your users. I dont give a fig for your designers, like facebook, probably most of them are wonderful programmers and code wielders, but have no sense of 'design'.

Go any further and I too, a long time user will desert as many are doing. Think hard, think long, think deep, before changing what is obviously working just for the sake of change.

Am I new to the net....... nah... been about since 1993 before most of you in the UK including the 大象传媒 were online. *smiles*

I don't know who designed the new user interface for 大象传媒 mobile but they haven't got a clue what they are doing. It's a far slower experience with way more scrolling to get around the site, as well as the fact that it makes it feel like you have to search through the site for news rather than have it presented to you. This is a step back into the dark ages as far as mobile news content goes. If its not reversed I wont be using the 大象传媒 for much longer.

I am incredibly annoyed and irritated that the 大象传媒 News Mobile pages have gone "tabloid" It is now impossible to quickly skim across a range of sections and stories as before. Was there any consultation with users? To quote the previous comment from Billtee: "The original format was perfectly understandable, compact and easy to read"

In presentation terms, this feels like a substantial backward step - the huge (>80% I reckon) reduction in information density combined with the inability to quickly scan across the top headlines across a range of news sections seems to benefit no-one. The old layout was straightforward and simple to use - merely a list of headlines - that was an excellent fit for space-constrained mobile screens (I use an iPhone).

I realise that pride, embarrassment and face-saving may prevent a return to a more usable layout but still, this is a very disappointing change. Can we have a high-density, low-graphics option please?

I have been a very frequent user of www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile for several years now. I have a Nokia N97 and the 大象传媒 news website was my favourite way of catching up with news when I was at home and abroad. The old webpage was concise, fast loading and very easy to navigate and read. I find the new design impossible to use. The font size is totally unreadable even if I try changing the font settings on my mobile browser to largest ( doesn't seem to have any effect on the 大象传媒 news site ). It's as though the new site has been designed for tablet devices and laptops (though they can quite easily access the main 大象传媒 news site) - there is far too much information on the first page for small displays - the old design was far better. Why oh why 大象传媒 do you not ask your mobile users for feedback on your existing sites before you change them ? As others have already said here - If it ain't broke and your users like them - don't fix them

I don't get it. The news site has pictures next to the headlines, and no pictures in the articles. Surely this should be the other way round, with a preference setting to turn them off for people with very slow connections. Baffling.

I'm a Blackberry user and was very disappointed to see the changes to the 大象传媒 website. Before I could scroll down and see headlines under different topic areas, now I only get the topic areas and have to open that before I can see if there is anything there I want to read. More time, waiting. I use the 大象传媒 website for my news on a daily basis - or I have done - please bring back the old layout!

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

This is so frustrating. What a mess. What bright spark thought this new news page design up ? Anyone recommend an alternative to the mobile bbc news website ? Something simple that loads fast

A site overhaul that was long overdue. I like it - thanks.

Awful. Prior to this "upgrade" (if you want to call it that) the site was perfect for browsing on iPhone and iPod. Now it looks like a child has designed it. Terrible.
How much are you paying these "web designers"? I'd ask for a refund if I were the 大象传媒

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Did anyone actually test this?
I ended up on a 大象传媒 story from my new Google News homepage.
Clicking Menu on the drop down options, the whole of the last row options is obscured. Bad design.

(Device:N8 Belle, Browser:Native)

I despair at the constant "I don't like change" complaining.

It's modern, looks great and loads fast.
I look forward to the whole site being responsive and there no longer being a separate m.bbc as there is no redirect between the two. Of course the responsive site would have to have all the features of the desktop site first. If you ever have to click 'view desktop site' then the mobile site was a failure in my opinion.

Why must people say things like 'there is a slight text overlap therefore the whole site is a failure and you should go back to the old one'?

I actually prefer this to the iOS app and have added it to my home screen (could use a retina icon).
One thing I will say is on my iPhone 4, if I go landscape (which I don't really need to as it's better portrait) then the page appears to just zoom rather than reflow. The main image just fills the whole screen and I don't really get any extra text per line.

@30

You're confusing "I don't like change" with "I don't like the changes you've made, as you've made something that was good - and worked - into something that's not as good, and doesn't"

A massive difference.
If the new 大象传媒 News mobile site *was* better, then people wouldn't complain.

The whole point of customisation has been lost with most of the recent refreshes. Is this a step forward? No.

Tengsted,

Couldn't agree more. How could they take such a fantastic useable news site and ruin it.

Wonder will they read all these complaints ? Wonder will they do anything about it ?

Somehow I doubt it.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I can imagine your team has put a lot of effort in building the new site, but i preferred the density and ease of navigation in the old mobile site much more. Will be good to have a link to the old interface.

大象传媒 has been a daily dose for me for years now, and this will totally ruin it for me. Dont think I'll be able to continue for much longer as a user on the mobile site if the new interface stays.

I quite like the new format, particular as you can see when a story was last updated. any chance you could offer the same redesign to the main PC site?

Could you please answer my question I made as comment #2?

One does hope, Kate, that rating and commenting, is further down the options list, now that the font/pictures has reached a ridiculous size, customising the actual news displayed is much, much more pressing.

This should be an option WITHOUT signing in to the 大象传媒 anyway, but seeing as you're intent of making users having a retrograde experience browsing, it has to be one of the first improvements you're going to make from the current effort.

37. At 11:31 30th Mar 2012, Kate Milner 大象传媒 -
Thanks for everyone's comments. It鈥檚 good to see how much people care.. taking into account your feedback of course.

You are most welcome. I don't know about the not all mentioned, but it's clear you mostly got to hear back what was expected.

Hi Kate - and do you have an answer to my question about the font/banner sizes?

Is the "larger the screen, the larger the relative elements" result (as perfectly demonstrated by your photo) intentional or a bug to be fixed?

And for reference I can confirm the trend continues - I have the absurd situation on my android tablet where the headline and photo (of which I can see half in landscape mode) are so enormous that the photo is pixelated at 20cm wide!)

So is that an admission you've rushed in the new site without adequate testing? Further optimising sounds like we're in beta testing at the moment...

Would be interested to know if you carried out any cost benefit analysis before fixing what wasn't broken.

Kate, just wondering if you can explain you definitions of these words you use in your blog:
Tailored
Talented
Improvements

It seems your definition may well be different to that of most users of mobile devices

Kate Milner 大象传媒 wrote;

"It鈥檚 good to see how much people care, although I appreciate that not all of you are comfortable with the changes." ????

Have you read all the comments Kate ?

The vast majority of the comments made here range from disappointment to deep frustration and annoyance.

@46 Curlyreb 'The vast majority of the comments made here range from disappointment to deep frustration and annoyance.'

Pretty normal for a blog - attracting those that want to complain.

I, like some of the posters here, like the site - its easy to navigate and looks good too.

@47 DBOne I agree the blog has attracted those who want to complain. Those that are complaining are not just complaining about change. Change is fine if it's an improvement but a lot of the complaints are from users who are finding the new site a backward step both in design and useability. The new site does not work well with small screen devices. It's difficult to read and too much space for images & photographs which will slow up access for those away from wireless connections.

So it's not complaints for complaints sake. Why didn't the 大象传媒 trial the new design before rolling it out to us all ? A commercial company probably would have.

'46. At 12:03 31st Mar 2012, curlyreb
The vast majority of the comments made here range from disappointment to deep frustration and annoyance.'

Actually, some made points about accuracy concerns as a consequence of the need to 'fit' mobile device screens, citing other 大象传媒 blog URLs.

These were first referred and then deemed to break House Rules by being 'off topic'.

The comments are read. Just those really not fitting the narrative get removed for a Newswatch 'we have got it about right' trill.

Really bad. To demonstrate how bad please add the option to REVERT TO PREVIOUS FORMAT on the main page and see how many people change back. I will probably give it a week to see if the site is improved before I start looking around. Unless this is a conspiracy to drive viewers away from the site and reduce 大象传媒s budget. The previous format could not be faulted it was one of the most intuitive sites for my iPhone

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Guess 大象传媒 IT Guys and Girls are on whacking bonuses to deliver ahead of end user experience.

95% of the changes made to the 大象传媒 websites - via any platform - appears to be negative and yet no one 'in charge' appears to be able to stand up against this torrent of change towards lowing standards.

I only use the blog sites now - the news, sport, weather, homepage are all a poor excuse of good integrated design.

Enjoy your bonuses boys out of our TV Licence Fee.

@53 Kate Milner 大象传媒 wrote:

"We carried out a range of user testing and audience research..."

Kate which bit of - It doesn't work do you not understand ? The majority of the comments made here should tell you that somethings wrong But it would appear from your last posting that you intend sticking to you guns regardless of the level of complaints.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them.....

Getting bored with hearing about the 大象传媒 "audience research" - it's the mantra to hide the fact of a poor designed website that is covered up be poor managers!

Boring, Boring, Boring , oh wait just like the 大象传媒 websites!

I found the updated site when using my HTC phone on a train to Cardiff, last Friday. So, using it over 3G (no Wifi available), I found it easy to use, clear in its presentation and very fast with uploads. Clearly there will be more updates that add to the new UI/UX, I think its a step forward and shows me that the 大象传媒 continues to understand that mobile devices are the main way that more & more people are accessing content.

Looking forward to see Comments added at some time.

@53.

Publish the audience research then, so we can all see it.

If you don't, some less charitable people might think you've got something to hide.

The new site is awful. The old one was fine and didn鈥檛 need changing. It鈥檚 now much more work to find stories of interest as it involves large amount of scrolling. Instead of about 7 stories on a page I now get 1 or 2. Can we have the old site back on a different URL so anyone who wants the new dumbed-down screens can have them and the rest of us can get on with reading news without the site getting in the way.

kate, can you answer the question regarding the fact that iPhone users will see less content on one screen than Blackberry users, where the latter one have smaller screens? (see picture above)

Kate Milner 大象传媒 wrote:

鈥淲e developed this site to make it easier to scan a range of stories.鈥�

鈥淥ur audience research also showed us that images also help convey the story.鈥�

You can not be serious, really? I get one heading, a huge picture and four lines of text on my first screen! (N8)

So, new phones have bigger screens, that show less news, than 5 years ago!

Great work guys!

Give me a simple text menu please!

It would seem nothing has changed since I made my first posting.

Comments from 大象传媒 staff seem to suggest that we have just got to take the medicine and learn to like it.

Pretty rich as most of the posters here are 大象传媒 license payers and effectively pay towards 大象传媒 salaries.

I am using another news site now (not happy about it but at least it's fast & useable)

My comment will probably be removed by a moderator if I mention the site by name but if anyone's interested and googles "best uk news sites" there are a few listed.

Save your breath everyone. Anyone who's followed the 大象传媒 Sports redesign will recognise the story and know nothing will change beyond a few cosmetic tweaks. Thousands of complaints but just minor adjustments.

The 大象传媒 is determined to push its agenda of image heavy, video dominated infotainment pages at the expense of news. Very sad. I took the opportunity to find other sports sites that better meet my needs than the new 大象传媒 effort. So I'd encourage 大象传媒 mobile users to look around too.

Me too. Just give me the news. And please can the editors' blogs cut down on the Twitters? I want to read a reasoned analysis without having to scroll through scores of kneejerk remarks that outdate rapidly. Very annoying. Its all becoming a babble.

'64. At 09:59 5th Apr 2012, commuterjoy '

Mind popping that in 140 chars or less so I can read it all on twitter via my mobile?

It's the future of 'news', accuracy and debate, dontchaknow?

@ zoot364, Jan3

If you don't like the images you can turn them off in your browser. Alternatively you can use the 大象传媒 News RSS feeds too.

Kate you say "We developed this site to make it easier to scan a range of stories" but the old site was far better for that. You could see far more headlines on the page at anyone time. This redesign makes it harder to and slower to look at news stories. You also say you have done audience research and user testing, but you'd have to agree that the response to your changes have been pretty negative, that must ring some alarm bells for you surely?
I have chatted to a number of friends about the update and none of them seem to feel its an improvement either. I really hope that the 大象传媒 can see some sense here and change the approach they have adopted; that鈥檚 the brave and visionary thing to do rather than plough forward with an approach is clearly floored.

The new design looks good to me, even old or new sites also they give us a real news for us

'53. At 15:43 3rd Apr 2012, Kate Milner 大象传媒 -
Our audience research also showed us that images also help convey the story.

Not to clear who this audience is, as I have never been asked, but in conveying the story, have any mentioned getting the full one, accurately, may be nice too?

Fitting things on mobiles does seem to present 'issues'. Consider:

/news/uk-politics-17642736
'George Osborne 'happy' to reveal politicians' tax data'


'Osborne 'very happy' for government to consider publishing MPs personal tax returns'

Now those headlines seem to be saying rather different things.

And what it says about the 大象传媒's rush to squirt out stuff to fit the smallest of screens is not so far encouraging.

@69 Headlines are an attempt to summarize a particular story in a very small number of words and to get you to read it. The Guardian chose the headline "Osborne 'happy' to publish tax data" for this story - pretty similar to the 大象传媒.

The first line of the 大象传媒 article clarifies the headline and reflects the Telegraph headline.

70. At 10:12 7th Apr 2012, DBOne

Ah, your rather cryptic, and inaccurate, two-worder elsewhere explained.

@69 Headlines are an attempt to summarize a particular story in a very small number of words and to get you to read it.

Attempts that fail when they are inaccurate and/or mislead. Getting one to read based on an inaccuracy may seem a neat idea, but is hardly high on integrity.

Some media manage it; others... evidently, do not.

The Guardian chose the headline "Osborne 'happy' to publish tax data" for this story - pretty similar to the 大象传媒.

If the intent was to make a case for the objectivity of the 大象传媒, this may not be the best news medium to cite.

'The first line of the 大象传媒 article clarifies the headline and reflects the Telegraph headline.'

This is a blog about the move to mobile. Not all people move from the headline to read what it should have conveyed being clarified. That... is the point.

I can live with a polar bear family scene being rigged for dramatic effect. However the producers of that show claiming it was explained online somewhere else was a level of farce on par with Douglas Adam's 'Beware of the Leopard' file in H2G2.

A 'news' medium where what is written as headline may or may not actually reflect the truth of the story is another matter, especially when admitted, and airily dismissed by pointing at para 37 in mitigation won't cut it.

I now have several complaints heading to Trust level on this, and the tenor of the response so far suggests it's proving very hard for professional journalists to defend semantic deceptions no ad copywriter would attempt or be allowed to keep in print.

I am happy to consider their excuses. So far, I am not happy, at all, with the ones attempted. See the difference?

My laptop is classed as a Mobile in bbc.co.uk (but I have no "Mobile Number").
I have asked before about this - I cannot see any blowup of the week麓s "pictures" on the special page - just thumbnails.
Is that the reason?
W E G P
cadiz

Sections doesn't work on an N8 using Opera.
It is exceptionally difficult to find news other than the headlines, and near impossible to find local news.

Will you still allow users to use the full website on a mobile?

'73. At 12:58 10th Apr 2012, Ian McDonald -
This is about the 大象传媒 News mobile site refresh. As mentioned on Chris' blog post, it's not really about shorter headlines on the mobile site. Kate would not be able to answer questions about that.

Not really... so a bit then?
If not, please suggest where questions on this could be asked... and answered, without running risk of censorship.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I was very disappointed when this new version appeared on my phone. I am not interested in a visually appealing site, I just want to read the news. The new site is much less compact, the categories (Sport, Politics, Entertainment etc) are not as visible as before or as easy to get to with 1 click. Additionally, what will the increase in data usage be for this 'glitzy' new site with more emphasis on images etc? The old version was really basic but that is why I used it. A good news story should not have to rely on pictures and design to get interest!

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Hi

on my Android Desire S I used to be able to get 大象传媒 News Live on my WiFi connection

- now for some reason whilst get 大象传媒 One / 大象传媒 Two etc in Live mode for some reason 大象传媒 News defaults to 大象传媒 iplayer and then says stream failed or some such message

is there something wrong or am I doing something wrong ?

many thanks

You really have ruined the news on the iphone. As others have said we now have to scroll forever to see what's in the news. The old site was pretty perfect for catching up on the news with all the major stories selectable from the opening page. I now use the sky news page on my iphone - Kate have a look at it to see how it should be done.

The mobile 大象传媒 news site used to be one of the best on the Net as an example of how to optimise content for the small screen on a mobile. Following the revamp it鈥檚 one of the worst with font sizes too large and a ridiculous amount of scrolling needed. Students of screen design should get their screenshots now as an example of how not to do it. Can we have the old 大象传媒 site back please. Until then, like montygraphics above I鈥檝e gone to Sky News which has a far better layout.

@83 montygraphics & @ 84 406er - Couldn't agree more except the Sky News site isn't as good as the old 大象传媒 mobile site - I'm using it now as well. At least I can read the Sky site & it's fast.

I doubt very much that the 大象传媒 will take any account of our complaints though.

Any further forward in fixing the issues of your site on Opera on an N8 yet.
I did ask a while back, but sadly it's still useless, and there's not been any feedback.

It's not the only problem with the awful site on the N8, so it's clear you've not tested at all, despite the fact you showed an N8 in the picture at the top....

You've done a really good job. We have a Mobile browser that allows us to measure the HTTP performance of any web site. Your site downloads faster than Google's mobile home page, and you're also sending less data.

All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

Has anyone tried this on an older phone like my k800i? It really doesn't work (even a lot of the text disappears), where the old one was perfect. I know it's an old phone but there are still lots of us out there on these things!