Advice & inspiration

Organizing multimedia navigations by media type versus story type

I came across a multimedia presentation today by Chattanooga Times Free Press about Georgia’s 2008 drought. It reminded me of Las Vegas Sun’s recent multimedia package on the drought in Nevada, so I decided to make a great case in point with the two. While “Drought in Georgia” has content organized by media, “For Want of Water” has content organized by story. I cannot stress how crucial it is for multimedia producers to strive to do the latter, and leave behind this notion that we have to notify the viewers what media type was selected to tell a certain part of the story.

Let’s think about it another way. When your online team is brainstorming a multimedia project, you would not say, “Well, we need one audio slide show, one photo gallery, and two videos. Yes, that will make it officially multimedia.” NO! You would say, “I think that a video would best portray this part of the story because the interview is really moving,” or “I would like to concentrate on photography and audio because I think we could really tell a powerful story by combining still moments with natural sound.”

Furthermore, the user doesn’t come to a multimedia package thinking that he/she really wants to watch a video, or just really wants to see pictures. Rather, they are interested in digesting the story in whatever medium is presented because they are interested in the story, NOT the story type.

Therefore, making your entire navigation be a dictation of the media type is uninformative and a waste of valuable space. Notice how Zach Wise incorporated video, graphics, maps, interactivity, motion graphics and text into his package. Nowhere do you see the media type in the title, nor do you see a tacky media icon. I love it!

I don’t understand why our industry thinks we have to organize media and divide them by photo pages and multimedia pages. Do we title our homepage “Text Articles”? See, it sounds silly when you think about doing it to text stories, so why should we do it with any other story medium?

Chattanooga’s package has some great storytelling in it, and I wish the stories could have been played up more with an informative navigation. Here is my attempt at restructuring the navigation headers:

Introduction –> It’s more like a “Home” but you could also say something generic like “2008 Drought”

Photo Story –> “Lake consumers at a loss”
subhead: How a fisherman, bait shop owner and marina owner are coping.

Graphics –> “U.S. drought outlook” and “Lake elevation levels over time”

Video –> “Pumping water to save Carters Lake”
subhead: One marina’s efforts to pump two million gallons of water daily.

Articles (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) –> Just use the head and subheads for each (No need for “parts,” it has no contextual meaning and is therefore not needed)

Links –> “Drought in the news”
subhead: Read how others are reacting to this historic drought.

Now, I am not a copy editor, so these headers could get even shorter and more precise, but hopefully you get the point. Next time you do a multimedia project, forget the media type and design your package according to the story you are going to tell. If a video and graphic need to be displayed together to tell one part, that is great. Separating them would result in an incomplete story and an unsatisfied user.

Other posts that might interest you:

• Sydney Morning Herald showcases top-notch multimedia
• When it comes to multimedia, design is everything
• Behind the Scenes of Las Vegas Sun’s “Thirst in the Mojave”

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