Initial Digital Mock-Up

Following on from yesterday's research, I very quickly came up with an initial idea for how I want my website to look and work. It is very brief, and I'm sure it's going to undergo some heavy developments at each stage of user-testing, although I'm quite happy with it as a starting point.

Below I have attached the initial template I came up with. 

For the lower snippet, I have included photos to show roughly what it would look like once content has been added in. My plan is to have some text on top of the images, maybe just the headline, however I could have it so the headline appears as you hover over the article. Much like the '4 News Wall' I had researched, I have included the date's tab down the ride hand side, where I am planning on using a similar hover effect, where the articles from that date stay in full colour, while the other images saturate and dull down in colour. Similar to the 'USA Today' I have included arrow features which will allow the user to navigate between tabs, such as 'Sport', 'Technology', 'Health' etc. These will be colour coded so you can see which category you will end up in if you click on it. As the mouse hovers over the arrow, I would like it to extend out and have the name of the category as well, so make it a bit clearer, which would save the user from then looking up at the top tabs to figure out where it'll lead them.

I quite like how this looks, and I feel like it will be an effective way to navigate throughout the site. However, I'm going to draw up some wire frames and paper prototypes so that I can get this system tested in our next class, and get valuable feedback on whether or not it actually works, and then how to develop them over the next few weeks.