Dave Lawrence says:

As a Jackson, MI, local, it was pretty exciting to see the switch flip this morning. Congrats on the design collaboration.

February 2, 2012 2:00 PM

Dude says:

Epic failure. You guys totally screwed up on this one. You've moved digital journalism backward.

February 2, 2012 2:15 PM

Nick says:

If a "navigation system with a layout that cuts down on clutter while offering people clear paths to the stories and features they care about" means that a viewer has to click on twice as many headers just to get to the articles that they are seeking than they did on the old site, then that system is an epic success. I also suggest selling advertising to aspirin manufacturers, as the new "bold yellow" border is a headache waiting to happen.

February 2, 2012 2:31 PM

Andrew says:

Yeah... I wouldn't rush to put my name on this site. Talk about an eyesore...

February 2, 2012 2:42 PM

Brian says:

I think you should keeping hoping. The site is brutal and I will only be accessing mlive via it's mobile application from now on.

February 2, 2012 3:14 PM

Luke says:

You've added enough navigation and chrome to push the news further into the background. How on earth can you believe your bold design "cuts down on clutter?" An epic fail of yellow (journalism). I'll be getting my GR news from Google News.

P.S. You could at least make the logo and nameplate links back to their respective homepages when reading an article. That's UX 101.

February 2, 2012 5:38 PM

Jim says:

You may want to read the 99.999% negative comments being posted by the real mlive users before you use this as marketing for your services. You really missed the target on thus one including the use of a color scheme that is not only difficult to read but alienates a majority of mlive users because it closely resembles that of one major university in the state over all the others. In sure this was inadvertent, but it shows you really didn't do a very thorough job understanding your clients readership.

Mlive readers want information and an intuitive way to get at it. Not tabloid "pop". You delivered neither and your client is paying for it dearly.

February 2, 2012 5:47 PM

Kevin says:

Way too much scrolling is required to find articles. On a 21 inch iMac (1680x1050), I can only see two and a half articles. The header is enormous. Mlive claims usability studies were done but with whom? Apparently, not people who want to read the news. I second Luke's comment, I click on the logo and nothing happens... I'm not sure I'd be bragging about this design.

February 2, 2012 6:31 PM

Dan says:

It reminds of me every celebrity gossip site. Only with less functionality and less room for stories to be displayed on my screen. The old page was much better. Top state and sports stories on the front page, and expanded coverage when you clicked your local page. You could even see more items on one screen without scrolling than you can after scrolling a whole page of this. This page is so annoying I might stop going to Mlive. HOLLA!

February 2, 2012 6:56 PM

John says:

Hope you already cashed the payment for this one, because there is quite the backlash taking place from MLive users.

Who thought this was a good design? Seriously...?

February 2, 2012 6:56 PM

Jim. says:

Yellow as the dominant color on a Journalism site? Seriously?

February 2, 2012 8:47 PM

Jason says:

As a software developer, I know that all too often client requests and insistence ends up trumping the better judgment of a good design team. I seriously hope, for your sake, that this was the case here. The MLive.com redesign is too awful to adequately put into words. It is easily among the worst professionally done sites I have ever come across.

Functionality and usability has decreased since the previous version of the site. Both you and the MLive team say you polled readers to find out what improvements the site needed. I would have to say your sample selection was severely flawed. The overwhelming majority agrees that the functionality of the old site was vastly superior.

Apparently no thought was given to users of tablets and mobile phones as the layout does not translate well at all to them. The ads on the right hand side float over top of the content when viewed on a mobile phone, making the site functionally useless.

On top of the usability issues, the entire visual scheme is garish and extremely unpleasant to look at. It’s not just ugly; it is literally painful on the eyes. I really hope the inexplicable overuse of bright yellow everywhere on the site was the insistence of someone at MLive; otherwise, I have to question the competency of your design team.
I wouldn’t be tooting my horn over this project, that is for sure!

February 3, 2012 5:46 AM

rich says:

Mule clearly does not know what it is doing. Anyone with an ounce of web design experience would never have done what Mule designed for mlive. It's 2012 not 1995.

February 3, 2012 8:16 AM

Mike says:

I'd have to respectfully agree with the majority of the criticisms in these comments. I think the redesign is disappointing. We were hoping for something much classier here in Grand Rapids.

February 3, 2012 8:37 AM

Mike Monteiro says:

Hi, Mike Monteiro here. I led the design of the new MLive.com home page. We took a lot of factors and input into account, and I stand behind all of the decisions we made. This was intended to be a radical redesign, and inevitably this much change all at once provokes a strong reaction.

As with any significant website launch, there will be adjustments and tweaks based on how the new design is performing over time. We look forward to those continued improvements.

(If you're interested in the related issues of anticipating and responding to user feedback on websites, I recommend this excellent piece by Paul Ford The Web is a Customer Service Medium.)

February 3, 2012 1:21 PM

Chris C says:

Seriously guys, this is where someone should say ".... we tried something new and it didn't work". I for on would admire that in a company. Anything else indicates you aren't listening to the feedback of readers. Do as you say.

February 3, 2012 4:56 PM

John C says:

The fact that you can't see how bad the web site truly is says you don't have a clue about web design.
You may have taken a lot of facts into consideration but the important one you are failing to consider right now is viewer reaction.
The web site looks like it was designed by a first grader with a thing for yellow

Pleas admit this is a hideous mistake and undo it

If you have to make changes start over and get something that works and doesn't irritate your readers

February 3, 2012 6:35 PM

Jason says:

Mike,

There is a vast difference between radical redesign that is good but will take some time to get used to, and radical redesign that is not good and will not be accepted no matter how much time passes. This falls into the latter.

The MLive site has changed many times over the years. With each redesign I've felt mild annoyance at something I'm used to changing, but never felt compelled to complain about it and eventually got used to it because the design, while unfamiliar, was well executed and usable. The current MLive site is not.

I don't know how you can stand behind a masthead and nav bar system that literally take up half the page and push the single viewable item of main content partially off the screen. I don't know how you can stand behind the decision to require multiple steps to find content that used to be visible at a glance on the old site. I don't know how you can stand behind a color scheme that is so shockingly bright it is painful to look at; people are actually experiencing image retention after looking at it for too long. I don't know how you can stand behind a font that has major readability issues.

I'm sure Netflix CEO Reed Hastings stood by his decision to make radical changes to his service as well... until he lost nearly one million customers in three months.

I've checked out some of your other projects and it really is top notch work. I don't know how the same studio that developed such well thought out and tastefully designed sites could be responsible for the mess at MLive. Maybe the MLive team shoved some bad ideas down your throat and your hands are tied. Maybe the people you received input from are part of the lunatic fringe. Or maybe you just decided to take a shot at implementing some far out design concepts and missed the target. Whatever it is, the result is bad and beyond the point where adjustments and tweaks are going to fix it.

Even the best at what they do miss the mark sometimes and produce some flops. I strongly believe this is what happened here. Nobody will begrudge you for admitting a mistake, but they will hold it against you if you stubbornly stand behind a product that is just not very good.

And just to show you I'm not being negative for its own sake, I can honestly say you did a great job on the new drop down menus.

February 3, 2012 6:49 PM

Tom Allen says:

This is not design at all. It is a complete and utter train wreck. If you truly are a 'design studio', then shame on you for convincing mlive that this was a good idea.

February 3, 2012 7:32 PM

Rachelle says:

Well said, Jason! thank you. A website has a limited about a time and a few clicks to grab the attention of viewers. Whatever is the most important news item for viewers to read MUST be at the top. What qualifies as the top stories for Feb 4, 2012? Mlive's redesign, the dangers of text messaging, and Matthew Stafford at the Super Bowl. What does WOOD TV show on their page? A man was stabbed. A woman was killed in a local car crash. A house in GR burned. The consequences of Michigan losing federal benefits. I spent 10 seconds on this Mlive disaster and went to Wood to read the news.

February 4, 2012 7:07 AM

Brandon says:

I'm sorry, but the redesigned MLive is unreadable.

The yellow color reminds me of four-day-old dried up mustard. It actually makes me ill to look at.

And the fonts? Why did you pick a font that looks like an old typewriter font? This should be something modern, easy on the eyes. The font is so squeezed together, it's also hard to read.

I also hated the prior version of MLive, so I know you had to do something radically different. But I consume a lot of news online, and this site is something I will do everything possible to avoid.

February 4, 2012 11:57 AM

Chad says:

Well said Jason! Mlive has been my homepage for many, many years. The site is horrible, take your yellow UofMlive and keep it. However, not everyone dislikes the new site. The people at freep.com are loving it and all there new followers!!!

February 5, 2012 5:58 AM

Sam Williamson says:

I'm sure the usability of the site has taken a step forward in many areas, but overall I've found the experience jarring.

The amount of wasted space throughout the site is probably helpful for navigation, but it's been a net negative for reading the actual content.

The color scheme in particular is an unfortunate choice give that those colors approximate the colors of the University of Michigan.

I'm sorry; this has been a step backward for my consumption of the content. I'm disappointed.

February 6, 2012 5:42 AM

Kenneth says:

At least the design team is digging their heels in by saying statements like, a bold/fresh resign will take getting used to.

The color scheme missed the mark, the user experience is poor, and the header reminds me of a 1996 geocities web page. Admit you missed some things, and work to correct them. Don't point fingers at the users.

February 7, 2012 7:53 AM

Rick says:

I'm a big fan of Mike_FTW and Mule Design, but why Why WHY would "Michigan"Live outsource the design of it's website to California? There are plenty of design firms in Michigan that could have executed this project (and based on the comments, probably done better).

Oh well, I guess I'll go have an Anchor Steam to cure my depression (could have had a Bell's)

February 7, 2012 5:09 PM

Just me says:

Wow, does this new design suck. I guess most of the blame falls on MLive for approving it.

February 27, 2012 11:44 AM

Patrick says:

Absolutely terrible design. Sad to see it's been applied to NOLA.com. There are inconsistencies across the board, the site navigation takes up too much space and gets in the way when trying to use the site, wasted space abounds, and glanceable content available to the user on the main page has been reduced to a couple of headlines with geriatric-sized fonts. The designers should be ashamed, and I'm embarrassed I have to click a button entitled "holla" to let them know.

May 10, 2012 10:15 AM

J.B. says:

Absolutely appalling. Ugly, unusable in Opera or Safari, and on my XP laptop the homepage is 80% useless header. The flyouts are hell on a tablet, inconvenient at best on a mousepad.

The colors are horrendous-- the site literally PUNISHES the user by being so hellaciously ugly and showing so little information compared to the previous cluttered design.

An even uglier, more cadmium-yellow version of this visual abortion has been inflicted on users of NOLA.com, and this time there's none of the "oh we did market research with locals" horseshit to hide behind. It was dumped on us, and everyone hates it.

You're terrible designers in both visual and usability terms; your work is shamefully unattractive and useless. Everyone hates your work; the feedback from site users in Michigan and on NOLA.com is overwhelmingly, swampingly negative.

I suppose someone at your firm must have gone to college with one of the Advance Internet boys-- there's no other explanation. In anything approaching a meritocracy, your work would long ago have landed you in the breadlines, condescending reassurances of "change can be upsetting" notwithstanding.

May 10, 2012 12:01 PM

Chris says:

Please reconsider the nola.com format. We're all dying without news down here. The user adoption specialists are all cringing. It looks like this was designed for a phone and then simply posted to the web. Please give us back our digital paper!

May 10, 2012 12:25 PM

kibbles says:

this templated design is giraffe vomit. sorry, but it stinks. youve completely ignored every learned principle of usability, user experience, simplicity, etc.. instead youve given birth to a monstrosity of bad form.

sorry guys, but you should have left it to the pros. it's never too late to take some classes...

May 10, 2012 1:35 PM

kibbles says:

(i mean, TWO (2) news items above the fold on a 21" monitor!? shameful...)

May 10, 2012 1:36 PM

David Muller says:

Why can't you guys take one on the chin and admit you were wrong? This redesign is horrible. You have ruined two of my favorite news sites (mlive.com and nola.com). Why do you have to keep shoving this horrible work down peoples' throats? Oh yeah, because you already got paid.

May 11, 2012 10:04 AM

truly pathetic says:

Broken in chrome and IE9

"winner" of the daily bad webdesign award

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/2012/05/13/the-times-picayune-an-example-of-bad-web-design/

an ugly 100-car pileup. The reviews are in-- you're bad at your job.

"Holla!"

May 14, 2012 9:15 AM

Diaspora says:

I lost my home in Katrina and now live elsewhere in the South. Checking NOLA.com daily while at work has for years been a way for me to keep and feel in touch with the community I had to leave behind.

By making NOLA.com so crazy-looking (in a bad way) and difficult to use, you have severed me further from that community. I can no longer browse as I used to, and I can't find the stories I want on the site; I will rely on NOLA.com's tv channel competitors.

May 18, 2012 1:21 PM

Rollie says:

I check mlive every day, routinely check @Mike_FTW's twitter feed..didn't even know the two were related in anyway. Small world.

I like it, nice work.

May 21, 2012 9:42 AM

Grant says:

Hi Mike

What can you say, if anything, about the problems Mule knew you were solving when you worked on this project? Did you know you were designing what would seemingly become the template for all the Advance Digital properties, or was this created in the context of serving the needs of mlive.com?

Were you aware this template was to become part of a strategy where the primarily platform of delivering news to communities like New Orleans and Alabama is its website?

I understand the compulsion to defend design decisions, even in the face of harsh criticism. However, at what point do we, as designers, admit mistakes and look to tweak and/or pull back from them? The negative feedback seems vocal for each of the Advance sites that have implemented this design thus far, and became even louder this week in New Orleans as readers learned nola.com is about to become the primary platform for daily news. From a business perspective, is there a way of handing a contract to allow a designer to remain involved in the evolution of a product such as this as it is rolled out across a diverse set of communities like Advance Digital? Or, more likely, is that solely dependent upon how much time and money the client is willing and/or able to devote to your firm?

Because my questions are so specific to one particular client, I assume these are 'no comment' questions, but any context you're able to provide would be appreciated.

May 27, 2012 11:43 AM