It came to my attention this week while perusing the National
Geographic website that the entire site was subject to a major overhaul two years ago. The official line National Geographic is taking on the change goes
something like this: “The new aesthetic balances high impact visuals with
uncluttered typography to provide a new standard in usability as well as a
larger canvas to view National Geographic’s world-renowned photography”… and
it’s difficult to argue with them on this point.
The way in which I
found out this nugget of wisdom was via an embedded hyperlink in a story that
whisked me back in time to a page from the website in 2004. The page I was
taken to had not been updated in January 2010’s remodeling and gave me an
insight into how the site has been altered; thus giving me a better idea of how
the site adapted to a world that demands more multimedia convergence.
The site was a far
more cluttered affair before the change, and though the links were there they
weren’t embedded in the text – making the user less likely to follow a story to
another far-flung part of the site. Nat Geo’s use of hyperlinks on their
updated website gives the whole experience the feeling of using a
self-contained encyclopedia. This allows the user to follow a story through the
annals of Nat Geo’s online history; with the added bonus of being met with a wealth of
interesting diversions along the way.
Nat Geo's news site before the makeover
A less cluttered version post January 2010
Another leap forward
the website took in January 2010 was the single sign on system and the open ID
integration - which I may have had a brief rant about last week. The fact of
the matter is that no matter how unnerving it is for some users (like myself)
to be signed into multiple sites through one medium like Google or Facebook,
integration into leading social networks is undoubtedly the sensible route to take.
According to Lukas Blakk in his
No More Passwords the
fact that so many people have to remember such an amount of different passwords
has led to problems with internet security. People cope by using the same
simple password for multiple accounts thus making it easy for others to hack
their private data. So these account merging systems can give the user a single
point of control over the security of a password, and let them integrate their
data and account attributes into each new site they engage with.
This system also works well for sites such as Nat Geo
because they can access people’s privileged information with high levels of
security, without having to prompt them to go through the rigmarole of signing
up and creating yet another new internet account. The upshot of this is less
passwords to remember and less individual accounts to sign into every day for
the man on the street (sorry, web); all this along with a wealth of benefits for large
and small websites and social networks, even if the whole thing does have a
slight air of 1984 about it.
So my archeological
dig through National Geographic’s old webpages gave me an interesting insight
into how the small details of websites have changed over the last few years.
How moves to widespread use of embedded hyperlinks and single sign-on systems
came on gradually enough for their arrival to be accepted and not appear
shocking… though I am immovably convinced we are currently living in the future.
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