We've just launched an exciting new project which, as you can see from the screenshot above, looks (and behaves) a bit differently from most other things on the Guardian site.
Zeitgeist is a visual record of what people are currently finding interesting on guardian.co.uk at the moment. While other bits of the site are curated by editors (like the front page, or individual sections) or metadata (like blogs, which display in reverse-chronological order), Zeitgeist is dynamic, powered by the attention of users, which is why we've put this into the Community section.
The combination of content objects changes throughout the day, sometimes by the minute, as activity shifts around the site, stories get linked to or talked about, new stories are published and become widely-read and so on. You can also explore what was attracting attention on a given day in history (2010 only, for the time being) via the "previous" and "next" navigation links.
As well as being a different way to display and explore content, it's also a bit of an experiment. It's not finished yet, and indeed may never be totally finished, but will continue to evolve and change over coming days, weeks, months ... and beyond. What you see today is functional, but be warned: it may break now and then, or look odd in various browsers as we continue to tweak and modify the code and design. We wanted to get it out there and live so you can see a bit of what we're up to and offer advice, feedback and comments (constructive please).
To make it easy to see what's hot at a glance, we've colour-coded each content block in line with the section it belongs to on the site (these are the same colours used in the navigation bar at the top of each page). A side-effect of using section colours is that you can see sections ebb and flow throughout the week. In the course of building this app, we've noticed that it looks like more "News" articles become prominent on Mondays, while more "Lifestyle" articles get attention at the weekend. But humans are very good to spotting/inventing patterns where there are none: maybe over time there'll be enough data to analyse it properly.
We hope that this makes for an interesting alternative springboard into the content on this site, and those who have been playing with it behind the scenes can confirm that it's a great starting point when you've got a few minutes spare and just want something to read but you're not sure where to start.
So how does a story end up in the Zeitgeist? Time, as the shampoo adverts say, for the science bit.
To start with we wanted to look at how people use the site. A very blunt way to do this is page views, which has its place but isn't that helpful in this context.
Instead we're analysing and combining all sorts of things; where people come from, where they go to next, how long they stay on a particular page, if the page is getting passed round twitter and other social websites, number (and rate) of comments and so on.
We're taking a range of these variables - enough that a single datapoint doesn't skew the results - and mushing (that's the technical term) them all together to get a value of "Zeitgeistiness" (another technical term) for each content object.
But - and this is the important bit - each content object only gets compared to other items in the same section, which in real terms means that Football articles only get compared to other Football articles, Technology blogposts against other Technology blogposts and so on. In fact, we go one step further, and take the type of article and day of week into consideration: an Environment gallery on a Monday only gets compared to others of the same type/section also published on Mondays. Because we've been storing and analysing this data overnight for a while now, we've got a good baseline to work from.
So when something appears on the Zeitgeist page, it's because it performed better (got more attention) than the norm for that content type/section/day. This makes Zeitgeist significantly different from "most read" and "most commented on" lists which appear on this site and others, which often contain a particular columnist or section which routinely gets more attention than other sections.
For example, Charlie Brooker (who regularly gets lots of attention on and off our site in the form of comments, visits and references/links all over the social web whenever he writes something for The Guardian) will only appear in Zeitgest when a particular column is being significantly more Zeitgeisty than usual.
Sometimes the items shown on the Zeitgeist page move around quite a bit, other-times they seem quite steady with one story taking up the main slot for the whole day. At around midnight the Zeitgeistiness for the whole day is calculated, with the most attention-attracting stories of the day frozen in time and placed into the archive.
More news will emerge in time as we continue developing and tweaking. In the meantime, why not take a quick peek, come back a few times during the day, maybe use it to dive into the site for a while and let us know what you think - and how you'd like to see it evolve - in the comments.
Update: Friday 5 February (am)
Thanks for all the comments and feedback below and on Twitter/other blogs. Lots to chew over.
A few people have been asking where we get the various metrics which make up the Zeitgeist algorithm. In the post above, we've highlighted some of the kinds of metrics, but in terms of sources, there are three main ones:
1. Visits, bounce rate, dwell, search terms and so on are provided by querying our site traffic metrics
2. "Social signals" (mentions on Twitter, etc.) come from site-specific search results powered by OneRiot's nifty API
3. Number, recency and rate of comments on content objects are calculated from the commenting platform used across guardian.co.uk
Some people have also asked about the name Zeitgeist and wondered why we're using it. Zeitgeist is a German word which means "spirit of the times" and is commonly used to capture the cultural/intellectual mood and interests or sociocultural direction of a particular nation or group of people at a particular time - in our case, Guardian readers and site users.
We haven't created Zeitgeist to replace the front page, or more traditional navigation on the site (which some people seem to have assumed), but rather as an alternative filter, for those who occasionally want to explore what others have been finding interesting recently. It's a mirror of attention, not an active promotion of particular kinds of content. As such, the contents will vary in tone, section and reason for inclusion.
As we said in the blogpost above, this is a work in progress and will continue to develop and change. In fact, we're doing a bit of tinkering with the algorithm (and the design) today, so do keep checking the Zeitgeist page for updates and changes.
Another update: Friday 5 February (pm)
Quite a few people have noted that some of the section colours can be difficult to read. In fact, the section colours are already in use throughout the site as headers and in the navigation, for example, but presented as solid blocks here, which means that if certain combinations of sections appear in zeitgeist the visual impact can be a little jarring.
Since we unveiled the current "design", we've heard people refer to the news disco, Elmer the elephant and Piet Mondriaan.
Some people seem to love the colours, others not so much. So in response to these comments, we've just made it possible to see the Zeitgeist blocks in high contrast, if you so desire.
To switch on this view, just click the little "high contrast" link (next to the previous/next navigation links).
In high contrast view, the blocks appear in shades of grey, which correspond to sections, though we've now added the section names to the blocks to make it even easier to recognise the source.
We haven't made the images black and white - there's only one image included in the high contrast version - but do let us know what you think: does this make it easier to read, if you were concerned about colour?
Please bear in mind that this isn't a final design, as we said in the original post - we're going to keep changing and tweaking it in line with your feedback and other things we're already working on.
Comments in chronological order (Total 136 comments)
3 February 2010 8:29PM
Zeitgeistiness ?
Zeitgeisty ?
If you make such words I can call my mobile phone "Handy" too.
3 February 2010 9:24PM
We like to see what we can sneak past the Sub-Editors.
3 February 2010 9:25PM
Admittedly not showing the post to the Sub-Eds also helped.
3 February 2010 10:04PM
Changing one number of the algorithm could change the whole Zeitgeist.
4 February 2010 12:11AM
You could also do one on Comment is Free posters called Schadenfreude
4 February 2010 10:56AM
Is that kittens I see as part of the formula? (in the zeitgeist design specification photo?)
4 February 2010 11:04AM
IMHO: The idea is nice, the scoring clearly thought through, the presentation needs some work. Stories without images are a bit overpowering with the solid colour blocks. It's also quite difficult to scan as a grid, one direction should really be dominant, probably more vertical than horizontal.
4 February 2010 11:43AM
Good - a bit like "The Wire/Radar" feature on Tumblr. Isn't there a danger that pages will become self-zeitgeisting (that's my new word) - i.e. when they get featured on Zeitgeist more people will click through to them and promote them futher through links, blogs and tweets? Or are click-throughs from Zeitgeist itself exempt from the Zeitgeist formula?
Looks pretty though. And interesting. And I bookmarked it instinctively - which is a good sign!
4 February 2010 1:27PM
@Imhotepa
I think we're balancing the numbers enough that changing one of them wouldn't utterly change the outcome. We spent some time weighing different types of user engagement/interaction/use to get something that didn't swing around too wildly.
I don't think we're totally there yet, and there'll be more tweaking over the coming weeks/months, but this is why we threw it out there now to get some other eyes looking/clicking it.
@itapoa
Kittens is indeed a vital part of the process, as we tea which is sadly cropped off the bottom of the image.
@paulpod404
Hah, yeah, elsewhere on the internet it's already been called the News Disco. We didn't want to spend too long on the design (you can probably tell) otherwise we could have spent weeks getting it "just right", which is good in some cases, but we thought we'd just go with it here.
One of the other test layouts was vertical so we'll possibly give that a whirl for a few days too, to see what people think.
@theirdarkaddress
We're protected a bit from self-zeitgeisting (nice work btw!) at the moment due to the rest of the activity on the site being far greater than the traffic/influence here. If we replaced the whole front page with it, then yes there'd be some feedback, but again because the activity is also measured off-site (i.e. where else besides guardian.co.uk are the links/stories being passed round) that's dampened an amount.
If (or when) we start to roll elements of this out into the main site (we have thoughts about how this may work) then we'll need to take a closer look at that effect.
4 February 2010 3:41PM
I like it. I've got two suggestions:
When I put my cursor over the story box, it would be nice if a short description scrolled down like on the frontpage of the main site.
The colour codes should be re-positioned to the side as I need to scroll down to see them.
4 February 2010 3:51PM
I am a very visual person, and I love the way the front page is displayed now. I can spot things very quickly, in your new system I have to do alot of reading, which is tiring. For starters, I do not like it and hopefully it will not be forced upon us. It will be there for those who want to use it, and the rest of us can still have what there is now. Over and out.
4 February 2010 3:52PM
Me likey.
I little more info on the subheadings might not go amis though.
4 February 2010 3:54PM
I've set zeitgeist as my home page for a while, else I suspect I'll neglect to use it. Looks good though, potentially embeddable in other parts of the site (or even external sites).
One immediate thought was whether the colour-coding could run down the left or right side - it's easy to confuse some of those colours and having the key at the bottom means scrolling down and up.
Could sub-headings for the articles be incorporated into 'mouse-over' information? 'A healthy addiction' doesn't mean much so may not attract the number of readers that would follow if they knew it was about Facebook. (Particularly as it's in CiF blue, rather than Tech brown.) Come to think of it, there's loads you could include in a mouse-over bubble: author, section, publication date, last updated, number of comments...
I rarely follow a Twitter link described as 'Funny!', but if I knew it was a video of a baby panda sneezing... well that's a different matter.
4 February 2010 3:54PM
For a really great example of how to use your design approach but also show more popular news items easily check out newsmap: http://newsmap.jp/
It aggregates all news from google news.
Take a look to get some ideas for evolving your Zeitgeist design and algorithms - to be clear I have no involvement with that developer. Just a very cool tool.
4 February 2010 4:00PM
The colour coding is not very practical - you have to always refer to the colour key, which is an additional, unnecessary and irritating step. Instead of colours, try using some simple icons, or icons on a coloured background.
4 February 2010 4:04PM
I really don't care "what people are currently finding interesting on guardian.co.uk at the moment".
Is there a reason why anyone who isn't either a sociologist, a Guardian employee, or a mindless sheep should?
4 February 2010 4:07PM
Why don't you make the box size linked to the amount of interest the story generates, like those maps of the world where the size of the country is determined by the size of the population?
4 February 2010 4:09PM
It's a nice idea but when you load the page, the rectangle isn't central (you have to scroll down): maybe you should ditch or minimize all the GU header stuff just for this page? Doesn't feel quite right somehow, mixing the standard page design and a new interface and form of interaction. Kind of halfway compromise.
Also maybe it could be more visually dynamic by having a kind of 'fading in' and 'fading out' zone for features/items that are increasing in attention/newer and others that are losing attention/older.
4 February 2010 4:09PM
You might want to change 'Zeitgeist it our newest experiment in showing trending news, topics and articles from The Guardian.' to 'Zeitgeist is...'
4 February 2010 4:12PM
I like it.
I'd never seen newsmap before - thanks Tailcast - but I think this seems a little clearer.
A short description would be good (when cursor is over a story).
Also, at the moment it does not fit in a single screen shot on my PC. I'd prefer if it removed the need for vertical scrolling - if the key and all info was on a single screen then i could glance at it periodically to get a 'snapshot' of the current zeitgeist but at the moment it doesn't give me that immediate view.
As for the colour key - it's the same as for the rest of the site - football is dark green and CiF is blue which takes care of most of my needs :-).
Nice idea - I hope it becomes a feature.
4 February 2010 4:12PM
If you like 'Zeitgeist' (and if you don't) then you might like newsmap - http://newsmap.jp/ ... also see http://marumushi.com/projects/newsmap.
- newsmap is similar, but with time-redundancy of the story indicated though shading and it's coverage is global. It is clever but the lack of editorial can render it a bit dull.
- 'Zeitgeist'' is a very Guardiany name by the way. Although newsmap is entirely doeswhatitsaysonethetin.
4 February 2010 4:14PM
Trending???? Are you serious? Since when was Trend a verb??
4 February 2010 4:16PM
It's giving me a headache....me no likey basically
4 February 2010 4:20PM
Very Chris Morris. Maybe you could call it Rubik's News when you get all the colours in a line.
4 February 2010 4:22PM
Even if it is weighted against massed click-ins by Charlie Brooker fans, isn't this going to be necessarily skewed by 'Thomas Pynchon Ate My Hamster' stories, over the meatier (or funnier, or distressing, or noteworthy, or... or boring...) stories that readers normally expect a newspaper, print or pixel, to draw their attention to? The Guardian has been sliding towards this please-write/edit-our-newspaper-for-us business for some time now. Are you really abandoning editorial control in favour of giving the punters what their clicks say they want? I think Aldous Huxley may have had a thing or two to say about this...
4 February 2010 4:22PM
One question: will this result in more proper Guardian content or more celebrity-driven pap? We all know what the masses want to view...
4 February 2010 4:25PM
Oddly enough I was thinking the website needed something like this this morning, as I walked home from the newsagent with my paper copy (yeah, just remember who pays yer salary mods (-: ).
I didn 't have a zeitgeist driver in mind though. It was more the thought that when reading the hard copy, you can scan lots more and sieve. It is hard to sieve a website, especially one as large and contentful, mmmh, as this one. Driven by the zeitgeist , it risks being just what the mob are finding interesting.
[Mob ? "Select mob" or "broad church" ? Let's not go there.]
The colours would work better if placed together, so you can see all the interesting things from an area together and home in. As it is they are just noisy.
4 February 2010 4:32PM
zeitgeist is so, like, not now, cherubs.
4 February 2010 4:36PM
The major flaw is that it uses colour as a key to understanding where the content is coming from. Anyone with any idea about website accessibility will tell you how it would fail any major accessibility testing. All your users with colour impairments will hate this concept.
4 February 2010 4:37PM
It's a bit like this site http://newsmap.jp/ which has been around for ages :)
I like your one too though.
4 February 2010 4:38PM
Doh, noticed that other people have mentioned newsmap too.
4 February 2010 4:41PM
I don't know if it is me but the whole screen appears to slant to the right when I look at it on a desktop computer. Weird.
Also, it badly needs a hover-over add-on. Would be nice to get standfirst or first para or something. www.newsmap.jp does it way better.
4 February 2010 4:46PM
As we said in the post above, this is very much a work in progress, and we expect to change it over coming days/weeks, so thanks for your great feedback and suggested tweaks.
We're familiar with http://newsmap.jp/ which is a fantastic visualisation of a wide news array (though I find it quite hard on the eyes). Our Zeitgeist is different, for all the reasons outlined in the blog post above, though there is some similarity in the way it looks. I guess there are only so many ways you can show blocks on a screen...
Like I say, though, it's going to continue to change over time, and we're already thinking about how we might incorporate some of your suggestions (and have a few other things up our sleeves).
4 February 2010 4:53PM
"Zeitgeistiness" and "Zeitgeisty" I can handle. It's "trending" that made me want to reach for the red ink in disgust. Did that get past the subs or are the subs themselves to blame?
Just because we're doing modern stuff, it doesn't mean we have to make the language crude and ugly in the process, surely...
Interesting idea, mind.
4 February 2010 4:57PM
"...and now over to the news with Piet Mondrian"
4 February 2010 5:05PM
@ dfic1999
Brilliant name (because let's face it, outside of Herder,Hegel and German philosophy, zeitgeist gets used in a kinda wanky,pseudy way).
4 February 2010 5:06PM
like it...
4 February 2010 5:11PM
I think it works well and prompted me to read things I otherwise wouldn't.
The only thing I don't think works is the use of images with text on a coloured background across them, it looks messy and spoils the picture. Why not put a coloured border around the box instead with the text appearing on mouse over instead?
4 February 2010 5:14PM
Great concept good to embrace the digital media further as the old format was very much like a newspaper layout ...
From a graphic sense its such a shame to have the tabs that ID each colour in a vertical - they would lie great in a horizontal strip like a rainbow page from a Pantone book!
It will be important to not become to populist - its great that the look will respond to customer interest in each story but it would be even better if there was an option for the content to relate to the personal browsing habits of each individual user - so those with an interest in a particular subject will have their fields of interest highlighted also.
Nice work keep it up push it as far as you can!
4 February 2010 5:24PM
By the way, white text on that yellow background for style. Not good, hard on the eyes.
4 February 2010 5:27PM
@sadhu
See that's weird. I don't get the zeitgest thing and assumed it would appeal more to someone who was a visual person.
I can get information far quicker from the standard front page and don't really care what other people are looking at
However - and a fairly big however. This would be very nice on a touchscreen device. Links as big buttons ... mmmm ... yummy.
Finally, somewhat strangely the term zeitgeist is everso dated.
4 February 2010 5:28PM
@dfic1999
I honestly did think about News Bingo for a while.
4 February 2010 5:32PM
Ooh, goody. Just 2 things:
(a) Can we add our own colours and news stories?
(b) Can we call it 'FunkyZeit'?
Bet mine is better than yours.
4 February 2010 5:32PM
If it helps people read more widely and intelligently, then great, but I share sentiment with ClubOwner in general.
4 February 2010 5:34PM
@mastiles
The guardian generally has a rather unique way of dealing with the issue of accessibility. Each change appears to make the site less accessible.
Anyway. Thats old news. How about a monochrome option ? It would be everso simple to implement and keep the DDA off your back.
4 February 2010 5:39PM
Zeitgeist? Please, that is only second in pretentiousness to Schadenfreude.
There is a little known law that allows anyone who hears/overhears someone else using this word to kick their face off. Singly or with help from others, either is OK.
Throw in a bit of glitteratti and Twitterati and the thin veneer that is my civilised state would peel away to reveal the levels of sickening violence I could perpetrate.
4 February 2010 5:40PM
Very good, bookmarked.
It will help me to meet my target of wasting my time more efficiently.
4 February 2010 5:43PM
Sorry, but what exactly is the point of this?
4 February 2010 5:50PM
Agree the colour coding isn't particularly helpful although it does provide vibrancy design wise.
I'm a big fan of the carousel style picture galleries in the new iPhone app which allow you to rollover/touch for info but get guide you using images (rather than colour or text) in the first place.
4 February 2010 5:52PM
I sort of like the idea but, visually, it needs more work.
I can see the reason to make the blocks colour-coordinate with their section headers, but the resulting mass of colour is pretty difficult to cope with. Those colours are fine as accents at the top of the page, but when they're all mashed together like that they're too much. And the title of the article, in a thin white font, gets lost.
The result is a big, confusing checkerboard of jarring colours that makes me very unlikely to visit zeitgeist again until it's had a redesign.
But keep trying - it's an interesting idea.
4 February 2010 5:53PM
Halo572, there isn't another word in the English language that fits what zeitgeist does though! Unless you want to use je nes se quois, or something like community paradigm, which is far more deserving of a good slap!
4 February 2010 6:05PM
lol this is a joke right?
4 February 2010 6:09PM
Nice idea - would love to see this as a Chrome/Firefox extension.
4 February 2010 6:13PM
I distrust folksonomic indexing, it tends to favour the lowest common denominator. To use one of Armando Iannucci's neologisms, it's Shitegeist.
4 February 2010 6:16PM
Zeitgeist? wah? wassat?
I vaguely remember what this might mean ... something pompous and meaningful ... remind me ..... I'm not sure really .
Its definitely not a word I ever use and none of my university-educated friends do either - so stop poncing about and please use a word that at least 50% of the population will be familiar with.
4 February 2010 6:29PM
You should have saved this for April 1st.
Sorry, but I think it's ghastly - very hard on the eye, difficult to read or quickly scan, dumbed down (so what else is new?) and ultimately a bit pointless.
I hope you abandon it - though I'm sure you won't - but if not, and you must go with the Mondriaan vibe, then at least widen the borders between cells, it's headache-inducing as it stands. You could also make the colours more pastel, or use a limited, palette - like the Notes and Queries section.
Personally, I read the Guardian because, foolishly perhaps, I like to think it's still a newspaper that vaguely values proper journalism, not solely a purveyor of ephemeral "zeitgeisty" rubbish like so many other papers.
I am increasingly having my doubts though, and exercises like this reinforce them.
4 February 2010 6:36PM
I think this could work really well but at the moment it doen't appear to be very dynamic. It would be nice to know which is the top story, how long it's been there for... something to give you an impression of how things are changing.
Also, I don't like the colour coding and the titles aren't informative enough to make me want to click on any one box. I like the front page where there is a column of pictures with grey heading boxes that tell you the topic and title of the article. This would work much better here.
4 February 2010 6:45PM
like it... a pinboard - I accessed articles without fuss
4 February 2010 7:21PM
Yeah visually it is poor. The colours convey little information- without continually looking at the legend. Frankly it offers nothing that a simple list or table does not. Sorry to be so critical but Im a statistician and I professionally loathe and piss on chart-junk. I actually commendt you for trying to inject some analytical content.
You would be better using colour and size to convey quantitative information-- and relax the rule about showing which sections are most viewed e.g.
there is a very nice example in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html
4 February 2010 7:27PM
Trending is the ugliest word I have heard in a long time.
Have you hired Nathan Barley?
4 February 2010 7:32PM
Wish I hadn't mentioned touchscreens. Dan Catt's only previous article was an advert for the iPad.
He certainly does seem to have Barley-esque qualities.
4 February 2010 7:37PM
1. Looks stylish and shiny - very important for modern news-readers.
2. Very good, intuitive, organisation - once ppl get acquainted with the color scheme browsing the news will become so much easier.
3. I am a heavy guardian user (1:30hrs+ a day) so I know a good development when I see it. And a good development this is.
= /> you have my blessing.
critique: project seems underdeveloped, keep working on it.
Overall - 68%, you are pretty close to a first here...
4 February 2010 7:44PM
A[art from the geeky terminology, the feature sounds very nice. I tried it today and liked it. I will keep on following it everyday.
4 February 2010 8:17PM
Hi,
I'm never sure what to make of the whole concept of finding out what everyone likes, then giving it back to them. I know that sounds strange. What I mean is, it seems to be a self-perpetuating loop of looking to see what we like, showing us what we like, then giving it back to us. It's a bit like going to out to parties only with people who have the same interests as you.
I understand why this happens, as I understand why if I buy a book or rent a DVD online I will be shown 'other books/films you may like', however in all honesty I come to the Guardian site hoping to be surprised, directed, challenged and shown something I would never have sought out myself.
Saying that, I do wish to be constructive. I love the fact that it's bold and colourful. I do prefer seeing pictures, as I work with pictures myself, but it has attracted my curiosity and I will be coming back to see how it evolves.
Good luck!
4 February 2010 8:26PM
dfic1999: "Very Chris Morris. Maybe you could call it Rubik's News when you get all the colours in a line."
I'd expect once the colours line up the whole line will disappear and you'll be given the option either to solve all the world's problems or claim a cash prize.
My goodness. I think we're getting there.
4 February 2010 8:45PM
Put it on the front page, add a real time RSS capability and allow it to be personalised, maybe by allowing category filters. You should check the big U.S linking sites (Reddit, Dig) and copy their forums - your content and their interactivity in one package would be a killer.
But, of course, you already knew this.....
Good luck!
4 February 2010 8:54PM
I agree with wefferson: visually, it needs more work.
You ought to take a look at Hungarian newspaper Népszabadság's "Hírmátrix" (News matrix) at http://www.hirmatrix.hu/ which is a lot more advanced than Zeitgeist.
4 February 2010 9:04PM
@Halo572, err... you forgot Twatterati. But then again because we don't have an Acadamie Anglaise policing the purity of common usage us lucky anglo-saxons can use whatever other word we fancy when the indigent vocab doesn't serve or, horreur of horreurs, we neologize.
4 February 2010 9:19PM
Obviously, when I said we're getting there, we're STILL having to read stuff. :-(
4 February 2010 9:25PM
please change the name!! zeitgeist is all of a sudden so en vogue. And apart from that it detracts from a perfectly good documentary of the same name.
4 February 2010 9:33PM
Wow! Zeitgeist! Tell me, is David Jatt involved?
4 February 2010 9:37PM
I trust that this experiment is not designed to replace the normal user interface?
4 February 2010 9:40PM
I can't read the headlines on the yellow - but it's fine, because it's life and style.
4 February 2010 9:49PM
Sorry - I am a bit confused as to how exactly it acts as a portal to the bits that I want to read. Right now we can click on World news to get all world news, but with this do we have to search for the relevant colour, (if its there, if everyone is watching the cricket!), then enter that part of the site to reach the rest of the world news?
I already have a problem with finding material that can sink fast if not so many people are reading it - especially as I am in a distant time zone. This looks like it will exacerbate that problem and might not be mitigated by the archive/search function - which has worked a lot less well after the last 'update'!
Don't want the Guardian to become more populist! But I guess it might mean that I have to take out a paper subscription, just to make sure I don't miss anything. Is that the aim of the change?
4 February 2010 9:49PM
@ RevDanCatt
Have you stolen dancatt's identity?
I could make a very unique avatar for you.
@ dancatt
if you have so many data about user behaviour, why not to show them on the Data-blog.
for instance:
How many users per day?
How long do they stay?
How many pages do they read?
How many comments are written each day?
Do users really click on commercial stuff/ads?
Where do users come from? Which countries?
When are users reading your pages?
.
.
.
4 February 2010 9:49PM
Sorry - I am a bit confused as to how exactly it acts as a portal to the bits that I want to read. Right now we can click on World news to get all world news, but with this do we have to search for the relevant colour, (if its there, if everyone is watching the cricket!), then enter that part of the site to reach the rest of the world news?
I already have a problem with finding material that can sink fast if not so many people are reading it - especially as I am in a distant time zone. This looks like it will exacerbate that problem and might not be mitigated by the archive/search function - which has worked a lot less well after the last 'update'!
Don't want the Guardian to become more populist! But I guess it might mean that I have to take out a paper subscription, just to make sure I don't miss anything. Is that the aim of the change?
4 February 2010 10:35PM
Sorry to be a pedant, but the RGB code for the yellowish colour is wrong. It produces pink. Try #e8d000.
Hexadecimal. Don't you just love it.
4 February 2010 10:38PM
Yes, I like it. Maybe the colour-coding could be used a little more intuitively; if a clour represents a category, perhaps the intensity of the colour could represent how important (hits) the individual item is.
It's an excellent idea and I like the way it's been rolled out early before it's been thought all the way through (as if that were possible anyway) so it can evolve in the real world. Good on you.
4 February 2010 10:39PM
The function sounds sensible, but the design violates basic principles.
1. The application of large slabs of primary colour goes against everything learnt about computer interface design since the lunch of the mac. It looks like a home computer screen for the early 80s. It's unreadable and will give people headaches. Furthermore, it gives far too great an emphasis to the section of the paper versus the content of the story. The same message could be provided much more subtly and readably by using a colour bar (no more than 3-4mm at the top or side of each block, or by colour coding the type in the headline.
2. The stories should have the first line or a stand-first beneath the headline to allow the reader to decide if they want to read more.
4 February 2010 10:45PM
Innovative and challenging design has been around a lot longer than the mac.
(I presume you meant launch of the mac, by the way)
4 February 2010 10:47PM
Too bright, too many words, not enough pictures.
The spider diagram in the photo is better and simpler.
4 February 2010 10:48PM
larrydelacrois:
Helen21:
Presumably, this is intended to do just what larrydelacrois wants, and is not intended to do what Helen21 already does.
By referencing items from sections we don't habitually look at, we might just see something that makes us go "Oh, that looks interesting, what's that all about".
Perhaps it should be called "Serendipity" - which has just about the same bollocksyness as Zeitgeist.
And: why does football get it's own colour, yet Politics/Media/Education etc share the same colour.
4 February 2010 10:50PM
citizendirect:
What a telling typo! But I think you've hit on it, albeit perhaps inadvertently.
The graphics are, at least so far, definitely more MacDonalds than Macintosh.
4 February 2010 11:09PM
Oh yes, that's really difficult to the at least ten percent of us who are colour-sight-impaired...
Unfortunately, I quite like the concept, but it's still too confusing.
Maybe the icons would assist?
4 February 2010 11:16PM
It looks OK... but it seems - as they said about the iPad - like a solution looking for a problem.
The front page does the same job, only better.
What do I come to The Guardian for? Content - of course. And I'm increasingly put off by all the celeb mag stuff and Masterchef LIVE blogs, etc.
What I'd recommend is a big poll asking what Guardian readers what they want. I'd be interested to see if Brittany Murphy stories is really what your audience is after. Maybe I'm wrong.
4 February 2010 11:26PM
its rubbish. dont need more stuff, just continued excellence in some areas of reporting and a whole lot better in others. rebranding (that crime of recent years) by another zeitgeisty name. you dont drink in bars with one word names do you?
4 February 2010 11:28PM
Why 'Zeitgeist'?
5 February 2010 12:26AM
For some real zeitgeist:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/
http://zday2010.org/
5 February 2010 12:28AM
For some real zeitgeist:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/
http://zday2010.org/
5 February 2010 1:48AM
Nice idea but how do you stop the zeitgeist rating becoming self boosting?
i.e. if an article appears on Zeitgeist and gets more more hits as a result it is no longer a genuine comparison as it is being promoted more than other articles in the same section.
Are Zeitgeist click through hits excluded from the ongoing Zeitgeist calculation and are "most read" click through hits also excluded. If not perhaps you could rename it Snowball!
5 February 2010 2:48AM
The layout looks fine to me, but describing it as "an exciting new project" is vomitous.
5 February 2010 3:48AM
Zeitgeist? Some folk really do have too much time on their hands.
5 February 2010 4:37AM
I really like the idea and thanks to the many people who have posted links to newsmap which I initially thought was too much information on a page but the filter allows you see trends and things you might have missed (note: if you haven't been there before, you're likely to shout "Too much information!!!"
I'll be watching this concept develop - though I'm likely to keep the front page as my entry to the site, I will visit Zeitgeist regularly.
Feedback:
- white on yellow - no! Can't read it.
- an indication of how much interest an article is receiving above the norm would be nice, a bar across the bottom of each box or position on the grid etc
- the highlighting of text on pictures (e.g. the Being Human pic above) needs to fit across the box, if it ends where the text ends it looks amateurish.
- a filter similar to the one on newsmap would be very useful - I am unlikely to read sports stories so I don't really want to see them. Being able to save the filter would be great.
- let me enter the date to visit, clicking previous, previous, previous is no fun.
Looking forward to seeing what comes from all the feedback you're getting...
5 February 2010 4:47AM
More feedback...
- please make the entire box click through and not just the headline within it.
- not sure why the html colour codes are on the legend but the code for Life and Style is #FFC202 not #D1008B
5 February 2010 6:46AM
Information should be categorised, ease yo find and easily accessible. Zeitgeist delivers none and is therefore, in my opinion, a useless addition.
On accessibility: it is impractical for the colour blind. Also, some colour combinations of foreground and background are sometimes hard to read.
On categorisation: it's the randomness that makes it hard to get what you want. It's better to always start with one category and rank from left to right. I know have to zig zag my way over the headlines. It's cumbersome.
On easy to find: apply filtering for the things (categories) readers aren't interested in.
All in all is this just another implementation of showing which labels (like in blogging) are most popular and the flaws are copied in ZeitGeist.
The way reddit (http://www.reddit.com) shows and ranks stories is, in my humble opinion, the best way to implement ZeitGeist.
5 February 2010 8:42AM
I've had a whole week of nobody taking a blind bit of notice of what I think so it's lovely to be asked my opinion, which is: The coloured boxes are very nice, what are they for again?
5 February 2010 8:55AM
5 February 2010 9:10AM
It's a nice idea, but I think the images break up the immediacy of the colours.
Maybe the images/extra text could be faded/scrolled in on a mouse-over event?
Agree with previous posts about the colour key as well; would prefer it to be placed somewhere else.
I'd never seen the newsmap site before today, but like the way the differing box/font sizes encourage you're eye to wander around the page. Cool.
5 February 2010 10:11AM
So your new invention is "headlines"?
In ugly blocks of clashing colours.
Well done. I hope you weren't awake all night thinking this up.
5 February 2010 10:44AM
So, for example, if say... ooh, Tanya Gold ever writes a good article this might flag it up?
5 February 2010 11:52AM
Horrible garish colours! Please fix that if nothing else.
5 February 2010 12:06PM
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I've just updated the post to provide some background about source material and the name.
Dan's tinkering with some design tweaks as I write...
5 February 2010 12:40PM
Please, don't.
5 February 2010 2:12PM
Well I'm in - should be interesting to see how this develops.
5 February 2010 2:34PM
I just hope this isn't a format that you plan to replace the entire site with. Please don't change the front page... it is PERFECT. That's why the site is highly regarded (don't add or take away!!)
5 February 2010 2:37PM
Not sure if someone has already mentioned it but how but applying an auto refresh option to it much like your live blogs?
And a link for it on the header bar of each page?
5 February 2010 3:06PM
Like it here too!
5 February 2010 3:42PM
I like the idea. The guide to colour and is interesting !
5 February 2010 3:47PM
I like the idea. The guide to the Colours and Sections is interesting.
Congratulations !
5 February 2010 4:36PM
Hmm. An interesting idea.
Is there a special significance to the larger box and the one with an image? Does it get a picture or biggified if it's extra popular?
It would be cool if it was updated in realtime to create a constantly shifting patchwork reflecting current viewing trends on the site. You could have the size of the box dependent on popularity and it's opacity dependent on age so an old but still popular story was big but faint and a new but little read story would be bold but small. Or perhaps do something with axis, x for popularity and y for age.
See what I'm talking about here.
Reminds me of a book I read with this guy with a big TV that had all the news in little boxes that got bigger the more important it was. When the planes hit on 9/11 it quickly took over the whole screen.
Can't remember the name of the book, but I remember the cover. I hate it when that happens! Anyone know the book I'm thinking of?
I agree that the colours are a bit overpowering and affect readability, but it?s good to see that Brooker doesn?t get extra Zg. points just because girls throw their knickers at him.
5 February 2010 5:10PM
Oh, I think I've broken it a bit ... hold on! :)
5 February 2010 5:36PM
Many thanks for the updates, they are lucid and open.
I just had a thought: isn't this a bit demotivating for your website editors on different sections? At the time of writing, there's hardly any Life & Style and other sections. Does your Life & Style person look at that and think: "Why am, I bothering?"
Equally, when serious journalists at your paper turn to the Zeitgeist and see so clearly that everyone is reading about how to stuff a chicken and Paris Hilton, won't they also wonder: "Why do I bother?"
Just a thought.
5 February 2010 5:45PM
Phew, that seems to have fixed it ... anyway ...
We've added a "high-contrast" version, Meg's added an update here about it.
Obviously this is a work in progress. Or rather, we're showing our working as we go along and checking in on the feedback (both good and bad). We have our own plans for moving everything forwards, but try to take these views into account, esp. as there's a few things we hadn't considered. Also something will take longer to impliment than other, ever onwards though :)
I was going to address some of the points made above in greater detail but the day's run away from me. I'm going to keep checking in over the next couple of days and try and answer some on Monday.
Have a good weekend everyone!
5 February 2010 5:47PM
Also somethings will take longer to impliment than other.
Sigh!
5 February 2010 5:47PM
DrMarcusBrody - interesting question.
Bear in mind that while the current zeitgeist changes throughout the day, the "true" zeitgeist is what gets locked in at midnight - looking at the overall attention for the site for the day.
So if you go back in time, you'll notice that some days reveal a zeitgeist flavoured with much more culture and lifestyles content, others more business and sport, for example. The colours (if you're using that version) reveal at a glance the relative make-up of the day's attention.
Every day, YMMV. That's why it's called Zeitgeist - it should reflect the preoccupations of the day.
5 February 2010 7:56PM
If this is The Sun like edition of the Guardian you should make bigger headlines, in bold.
I really wonder how this paper would look in a Sun-layout? Whether Sun readers would notice the difference?
6 February 2010 12:53AM
Something like this ... http://omg.yahoo.com/ ;)
6 February 2010 10:45AM
You realise you've basically created something that let's us all be The Watchmen's Ozymandias?
Nice work - certainly a more interesting way to gaze upon the horizon of news.
6 February 2010 12:24PM
You nicked my name! But I like the homage to ted.com
6 February 2010 2:23PM
@ dancatt
something like this:
http://s1.directupload.net/images/100206/sqzkej9w.jpg
6 February 2010 2:54PM
The difference it not that big actually
http://s1.directupload.net/images/100206/xazvmfmn.jpg
well, who cares? It's just a little confusing if the Sun would offer Eco store stuff.
7 February 2010 1:46PM
If it isn't broke, why fix it?
7 February 2010 2:17PM
It's bad enough dealing with Facebook behaving like a 5-year-old with ADHD and a bloodstream full of E-numbers, but this "groovy" new whatever strikes me as a complete waste of time and your increasingly threadbare resources. How come the internet is the one area where the axiom "If it ain't broke..." seems to have been entirely forgotten.
7 February 2010 2:18PM
Sorry CarlK - crossed posts.
7 February 2010 5:04PM
I love the concept although the design is a bit full on, especially when compared to the design of the gu site in general.
When I compared it to Newsmap (thanks to those of you who posted this link - I love it!), I much preferred the layout there:
- the way the map is blocked out according in colour sections (rather than randomly, as Zeitgeist is).
- how the size of the font indicates the # of readers...
Another feature of Newsmap that I thought was fun and would find interesting on Zeitgeist is the ability to customize it. For example, what are readers in Canada reading or in London vs. Cornwall...
I agree with others comments - yes to:
- the feature where the mouse hover gives a drop down menu with a bit more context
- images
- repositioning the colour codes to be able to see them at the same time as the map (either at the side or below)
btw - i also like the name zeitgeist.
can't wait to see how it continues to develop!
8 February 2010 12:36AM
Looks like a decent idea and worth a try, it's good to see that you guys are focussing on innovation.
As an avid Grauniad fan currently living in Korea, I logged on at 9.20am (KST - 12.20am GMT) only to be told that there was no Zietgiest yet. OK understandable given your pre ambles but if today's isn't ready why not direct users to yesterdays?
I imagine people will lose interest in a page that has nothing on it and just because each day is logged at midnight (a potentially very good idea btw) doesn't mean you have to scrub it and start again, it could continually ebb and flow and therefore always be available.
8 February 2010 9:45PM
Maximum Impact was the book I was thinking about. Knew I would get there in the end.
8 February 2010 10:24PM
i like it. can't seem to get it on mobile internet though which would be cool.
9 February 2010 2:31PM
@ChiangMaiCharlie
We were in two minds about that, showing a holding page or the results from yesterday. We decided in the end that still showing the results from yesterday may be a little confusing and admitting to having no reliable data for the first few hours would be better.
Hopefully at some point we'll move to a rolling 24 hours, but at the moment stuff still gets posted at around midnight and then throughout the GMT day-time. This seems to be changing over time though.
18 February 2010 10:07AM
Jobb creation exercise; nothing more , nothing less.
No one got either the balls or sufficient level of spinal fluid to admit it
19 February 2010 8:54AM
Hello
It is different but not really exciting me. But congratulations to the developers - did they do any user testing or questioning before they started ? I am not sure they would have ended up with this if they had.....
Can it be done with a map of Britain ? Who is reading what depending on their locatioCan ISP addresses be read by your servers or is that only MI5 capability ?
The type-face is hard to read against some of the colours.
20 February 2010 3:54PM
Please can we have a religion/spirituaity headed section with a colour bar amongst your list of indexed topics ?
22 February 2010 9:07AM
Just go away and get a proper job. This idea is completely ludicrous, I really don't need leading by the hand in this way.
This is the sort of thinking that, in an infants' school, gets people to put big, coloured labels on things (DOOR, on the doors, for example). I'm pretty sure most of us can find our way around without this nonsense.
Ah, so that's it - it's designed for the sort of person who would willingly perpetrate crimes like writing "your one" in cold blood.
Try "yours".
23 February 2010 10:22PM
I think your "zeitgeist" site/experiment/blog is brilliant, assuming that it's managed 24/7, and managed well. It will obviously only work to tap the zeitgeist if it's
programmed to do all the cross-referencing and crossovers which are reflected
by its users.
Zeitgeist is generally thought of as the spirit of the times we live in, or of
a time past, usually in 10- or 20- year, or longer, periods. In this case, what is so thrilling, is that we can gain knowledge of the zeitgeist for extremely contracted
periods of time.
Much luck.
CaraCaro
25 February 2010 4:10AM
Groovy idea. One suggestion I might make (well two actually) is that you continue to gather data throughout the night as it would be interesting to contrast how Guardian readers in other countries view The Guardian content (not to mention all the Brit insomniacs - I am an honorary member). The other suggestion is to fix the "View Yesterday" button so that honorary insomniacs such as myself can browse the previous day's folly.
15 March 2010 10:51AM
@Kickback2tunes - my thoughts exactly; an autorefresh feature would be extremely useful. Another site I frequent (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/lqspy.php - log in required, unfortunately) has a list of the most recent posts on that forum constantly scrolling past. If similar functionality were set up here, that would avoid me having to F5 every time I focus the tab.