Newsweek/The Daily Beast had a boat-load of content they wanted massaged into a “best of” experience.
So that’s what I gave them: a sharp-looking, easy-to-navigate, content-rich page incorporating loads of lists with multiple ways to view the data that works well on all devices.
The jam-packed Newsweek Daily Beast Digital Power Index.
Project
In June 2012 the Newsweek Daily Beast Digital Power Index was a new product: a listing of 100 influential and powerful forces in the digital sphere. It was to be a complement to Newsweek’s print publication but be able to stand on its own.
The brief imagined it as a mini-site, with pages for each list. Instead I produced a low barrier, rich user experience, keeping the bulk of the content on a single page, utilizing AJAX and jQuery for accordion and tab navigation. Though we were required to link off-page to slideshows for advertising impressions, this layout kept users within the experience, reinforcing the breadth of the content.
Being a one-off project (not being turned into reusable components) all code, stylesheets and JavaScript had to be included in a snippet on the page. Admittedly web standardista in me cringed but all went well. The end-result is visually pleasing, full-featured and has served as a model for other products.
