Concept Rationale

NZNW, (New Zealand News Wall) is a condensed news wall which allows for efficient navigation of news, in a more entertaining, image-based way. It was inspired by 4News Wall, created by Channel 4 News. However, their site was compiled out of GIFs, which in my opinion got super annoying and distracting seeing so many moving images all at once. 

The creation of this News Wall came down to the notion that people are more likely to remember, or identify things with pictures than they are with words. If someone was to try and remember the main picture used in the article, or what the heading said, the chances are they’re more likely to remember the image having registered it visually rather than skimming past it to the body content and not fully taking it in. 

Within the site, there are category and sub-category filters, which allow these news walls to be filtered down somewhat, in order to improve the efficiency of the navigation. Along with this, I have added in some date filters, which run down the right hand side of the news walls. What this does, is it allows the users to filter their searches even further if they’re looking to find something specific, otherwise they’re free to continue scrolling down the pages. The dates are written down the page, so by scrolling further down, you are able to click on older dates from further back. In order to improve efficiency for a user trying to find an article from a couple of months, or even a few years ago, I have further included a ‘Change Dates’ tab, which allows the user to change the months and years that they view articles from, via a small pop-out menu. 

Another strength of NZNW is the chance to set notifications to receive updates upon the release of new articles, and the ability to customize these to suit your own preferences, as the user gets to select exactly which categories they want to be notified about. 

The New Zealand News Wall is an intriguing step away from the plain old website, while making sure to keep the same news website feel to it, through the use of some traditional and common aesthetics such as the category tabs at the top of the page, although getting more creative in the approaches to how the site is actually navigated.