Information Architecture: Kansas City Star

So for the first project in our Information Architecture class, we've been assigned sections of different newspapers. By nature the websites for these pages are cluttered masses of content and a little user unfriendly, so we are each tasked with redesigning their website, better tailoring it for the user's needs.

I have been assigned with the Kansas City Star's New's section. This pertains mainly to world news and business, rather than sports, music, movies or anything lifestyle related. So we started with a look at the physical layout of their printed papers, and compared them to their online website's structure and layout. I'll upload the images of the paper layouts at a later time, here are the web site layouts. The Pages.

My reactions as a newcomer to the Kansas City Star's webpage was all in all a good one. While there was a massive amount of content to go through, the designers gave each section on the homepage the option to collapse and hide its information or to be moved around in relation to each-other. This layout saves when you come back to the website later, so you are able to customize the page to fit your needs as a reader.

The ads are still present, and I believe this is inevitable. However, there aren't near as many as the printed newspaper, and they are considerably smaller. Rather than being dispersed throughout the articles and layout, they are placed to the right side in their own column. As far as I could tell, the ad's themselves didn't relate to the sections they were under in terms of content.