Serving the reader
Posted on August 29, 2007 by Melissa Worden
The New York Times has a special section devoted to the U.S. Open, complete with:
>> Stories (of course)
>> A blog
>> Photo galleries (tennis makes for some funny looking moments in time, doesn’t it?)
>> Men and women’s scoreboards, which include links to player stats
>> Two videos so far (In the Shadow of the U.S. Open and Life on the Pro Circuit)
>> And much multimedia.
The videos are somewhat interesting, but at 5 minutes, I think they’re too long. (I started to get bored at 1:45/2 minutes.)
I was so glad to see a handful of interactive graphics and database multimedia:
>> Interactive brackets. The men and women’s matchups also include links to stories and other interactives
>> An interactive timeline of Serena Williams’s professional career. This graphic shows her rise to the top 20, her fall in 2006 and her comeback in 2007.
>> An interactive look at court types. In The Master of Clay Takes Aim at the Fast Courts, readers get a look at Rafael Nadal’s approach on three of the game’s surfaces.
I was reminded of Nora Paul’s talk about interactive graphics at the Multimedia New Producers Workshop when I saw this piece. Should we have to click a “next”? Paul posited that forcing readers to always take an action rather than sitting back and viewing the interactive could possibly annoy them.
Could be true in some cases, I agree. However here there’s a lot of information to digest, and I think breaking it up in chunks helps the reader. I almost wish I had more opportunities to click around and interact.
I also really like the 3D graphics used here with the tennis ball and the different turfs. The surfaces of the courts look quite realistic and it makes the interactive much more interesting too look at.
>> An interactive audio graphic. How do you beat Roger Federer? NYTimes.com asked friends, tennis players, coaches and the chair of the American Board of Sports Psychology for their theories. This is a great idea, and I think the presentation is nicely done with the large photo. I just wish they had a counter on the audio clips.
>> And a map, which is not interactive. This is a missed opportunity. Why not put it in Google maps or something like it so I can get personalized directions, find other areas of interest and print out larger views as needed?
Note: The headline is a groaner, I know. But I couldn’t resist.
Tags: video, multimedia samples
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