The objective of Slate.com is to provide daily news on politics, science, and culture.
The number of navigation systems is unclear. The website is a collection of articles. The basic navigation system is a drop-down menu system divided into categories of news, such as "Arts", "Business & Tech" and "Science". The two categories on the end of the menu are "Podcasts & Videos" and "Blogs". The menus contain lists of current stories in that topic. It is unclear how the stories that appear in the menu are chosen. Below the list of stories is a link to see all stories in that category. Below and clearly divided from those is a link to another story, which is labeled "SPONSORED CONTENT". The leading on that section of the drop down menu is crowded. Each story is also labeled with the column they belong to and the author. This makes for a very busy drop-down menu.
The most eye-catching navigation feature of the homepage is the slideshow of featured stories containing interesting photographs and typography. Slate apparently picks three stories each day and creates an image for each, to put into this slideshow. To the right of the slideshow is a list of other stories.
To the right of this section, there is some sort of media section, with different tabs along the top. The tabs are "Today in Pictures", "Cartoons", "Doonesbury", and "Today's Video". At least, this is what I THINK they are labeled. A search box is overlaying this feature in Safari, obscuring the tab titles.
Below the slideshow is yet another list of stories and smaller pictures, organized in a sliding horizontal list.
Below this are TWO MORE navigation systems. One is a column that organizes the information in different ways, such as by columnist or "briefing", whatever that means. The other is a list of today's stories, which can be changed by a tab at the top to display blog posts.
Down a little more you find another way to get to stories, via a list of Top Viewed and Top Emailed stories.
I could continue in detail, but I think it will suffice to say that there are four more ways to get to stories. It's hard to say which of these is the most prominent. Visually, the top menu seems like the stable, official method of navigation. But it's hard to say what stories I am seeing and not seeing by taking that route. Many of these navigation systems disappear when a story is clicked on. The top drop-down stays, the media viewer stays, and the sponsored links stay.
Once you get to a page, there is a breadcrumb at the top of the article that attempts to let you know where you are. However, the breadcrumb "Home>The Oscars>Let's Talk about the Oscars" doesn't really show a hierarchy. It seems like there are endless categories on the second-level of the site, and it's anyone's guess where a story might be located. At least you can always get to the home page via the giant SLATE logotype at the top.
The site seems to have the information to warrant a huge architecture, but it seems like there isn't really an architecture. There are so many categories and different ways of finding the same story, it seems like a huge flat pile of information you have to rummage through. The site map confirms this. It is a list of hundreds of unhelpful categories such as "Television", "TV Club", and "TV Week". Other sections had interesting, clever, but completely non-descriptive names. If you are doing anything but browsing, the only reliable method of finding what you want is the search box, hiding on top of the media viewer. The search results were very nicely displayed and labeled, and it seemed to do a thorough job.
The typography is simple and seems to work, but the quantity of information on every page and the busy typography of the surrounding multitudinous ads really hindered its ability to organize the information. The first thing I notice on any page is the huge bolded headline. The grid stays fairly consistent, but that the grid it self seems out of proportion. The information extends down and down and down the page to the point that some information feels buried.
The imagery was usually appealing and added to the articles, but the advertisement imagery was distracting. The only real color was the maroon used at the top of the page. Other (what seemed like sister -) sites were assigned colors in sections that linked to their stories.
The biggest improvement Slate.com could use is a consolidation of categories. There should be clearly named categories and sub-categories for stories to be filed into. They should stray from clever and go for clear. If they really want readers to associate stories with specific writers or columns, they should organize it by ONE of those methods. Or provide the option to choose which method of organization is preferred. I would also recommend trying to find a way to support their site that doesn't use intrusive ugly advertisements.
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