I have to say, I’m not that impressed with MSNBC’s Presidential Candidates and Issues Matrix. The matrix is a grid representing each of the past and present candidates in the 2008 presidential race, and where they all stand on five big issues. There is a lot of information in this package, and the creators did a good job of keeping it fairly contained. I like how info boxes about each of the candidates and about the issues appear when the mouse lingers near a candidate or issue. Like this:
But, I think there is too much information the users don’t really need and not enough that they do. Example: all the candidates, even those who are no longer in the race, are still included (along with their descriptions and all their positions on the issues). Example: look at all the blank spaces in that screen shot above! Do we really care about those former candidates and their positions anymore? I’d say not. Their mug shots and info boxes make the page too cluttered with old news.
Conversely, the “All User’s Ratings” page is lacking and, to me, a bit boring. Here, users can click on a week and see how other users have rated each candidate on each issue. A color scale represents the degree of support each candidate has received from users on each issue. But, the color scale is too limited. It consists of dark reds and greens. Because some of the colors are so dark, it’s just too difficult to tell where most of the squares fall on the color scale. As you may be able to see below, the rating colors do not stand out enough from the black squares on the rest of the page.
When I’m on this page I also want to know how many people have voted on each portion of the issues matrix. For instance, is Hillary Clinton’s user rating on energy based on one person’s vote, or the votes of several hundred people? There’s no way to know on this Web site.
I don’t think this is a Web site people will want to visit more than once and, given the fact that there’s a time element dependent on visitors each week (the voting), that is a problem. The only things that seem to change are candidates’ photos (they get grayed out when the candidates are no longer in the race) and the hard-to-understand color rankings. To me, it just doesn’t seem that interesting.
You make an interesting point about the fact that you thought a lot of the information was unnecessary. We wouldn’t re-write a news story when someone dropped out of the election race, but we would write a new story, a folo-up, if you will.
Obviously, we can’t just keep producing folo-up Flash presentations like we can write a quick story. So when the information becomes useless, or historical, let’s say, is it the journalist’s responsibility to change the content of the package? And if they do that, what’s the archival implication? Are they changing history’s record?
You bring up a good point. I think it’s something journalists have to pay attention to when creating a presentation like this. If I’m creating a presentation I should ask myself if it’s something that will need constant updating and, if so, if that’s something I can do.
Honestly, I think the presentation should be edited when someone drops out of the race. Since we haven’t actually done any Flash yet, I’m not sure how much work this would be.
It would be ideal if all the various versions of the presentation were available for users to view - that would be a real log of the process of the race.
I think both of you provide a great opinion about how journalists should better use the old information, which audience may not need any more. As Britney said, journalists may not want to wholly delet all old information, because it can be used as important background. For example, in this package, though people will no longer interested in those candidates who quited the election, but some of the candidates’ policy in different areas can be important if we want to value the policy of the remaining candidates. And as a package which want to record the whole 2008 presidential election, and the information can be used as a historical reference years later, deleting old information may not be a good way.
However, presidential election is not a new event, and all elections have something in common. As journalist, we can foresee that during the election, certain number of candidates will quit. So I guess, when journalists are developing this kind of package, they should creat another folder, especially for these candidates. to recored when they quited, and how they achieved in the election. Information about these candidates may be useless now, but it may be very important later, for example, someone become candidate of 2012 election or later become the president.
In this way, we can keep up the updated information easily and audience can easily get information they want. Also, this package can be used as a reference of 2008 presidential election later. We should realize that one of the important roles of news is to record the history.
It is so weird that we both had totally different opinions about this flash package. As I mentioned on my blog, I actually liked it. You said it has too much information, and I am sorry to say that I disagree with you. Finding out candidates positions on issues can be very boring—you are going to have to read long news articles, listen to the debates or view huge amounts of text displayed on the candidates web pages. I thought this flash production gave a very brief summary—a paragraph or two— of each of the candidates positions on five issues. It also made the information interesting by adding video clips of the candidates explaining their positions.
You also said you don’t think people would like to visit the site more than once. You may be right, but I would be really interested in visiting it every once in a while to see how the ratings fluctuate.
I do agree with you, however, on the design aspect of the production and the colors used. The red and green were very distracting and could be confusing.