82 games are played by 30 teams in a season of the National Basketball Association. NBA.com has up to the minute news, scores, highlights and commentary for all those who love the game and the most elite league available.
Because of the sheer numbers of fans of the sport around the world, the website has huge numbers in traffic. Therefore NBA.com needs to display a smart looking website that is going to cater for fans desire for information, with both functionality and design.
Starting with the use of colour:
As you can see, the site is very immensely colourful and mullti-media driven. The primaries used are red, white, and blue. That seems to be themed from the NBA logo, but Wysocki also talks about differences in colour use which can be determined by an intended audience dependant on specific cultures. She writes: ‘...you could probably easily describe the colours that would most likely be used in children’s books, or a website promoting health through relaxation - as long as a book or website was designed and intended to be read in your country. NOTE, however, that colour uses you take for granted do not carry across cultural lines: In China for example, the traditional colour of a brides clothing is scarlet and the colour of mourning is white’(Wysocki 2004, pg 132). The predominant colouring of this particular site seems universal, but in fact could be associated with different effects and meanings in alternative cultures. Also to note, the American culture NBA.com originates from, shares the state colours of red, white and blue. Which may be coincidental, or it may not.
Multi-media use:
There is a heavy use of photos and pictures. Given games are happening every day, (within the regular season) a photo of the live action is used as an excellent attention-grabber for further pursuit of information on whichever game it’s displaying. Wysocki mentions ‘That photographs are often used to bring a sense of immediacy and “reality” to a lay-out...’ And with the action popping out at the user, it acts as a good tool of engagement.
Also because of the volume of action that that website is reporting, it has a slide-show function of different action photographs sliding every five seconds with the five-box tool which you can roll over to display the photo and story that takes your interest. The use of this exercises an ease of access to effervescent information flowing through the ‘main gate’ of the site which is the initial point of your attention, which has been concluded by the beginning of a “F-Shaped pattern for reading web content” as described by Neilson here: ‘Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area, this initial element forms the F's top bar’ (Nielson, J. 2007)
Furthermore from Nielson, he explains from analysis of websites that: ‘The introductory paragraph(s) found at the top of many Web pages is what I call blah-blah text: a block of words that users typically skip when they arrive at a page. Instead, their eyes go directly to more actionable content, such as product features, bulleted lists, or hypertext links.
NBA.com seems well-versed in his theories with extremely little or no text at all in the introductory top part of the website.
Use of video:
‘In CD-ROM-based multimedia applications, video can be shown through masks of any shape and not just in rectangular windows. A video sequence can thus be smoothly integrated into a scene, making it look as though parts of the screen “come alive”. (Wysocki 2004, pg 136).
With the feature photo-news slider in the meat of the site, also comes links to game video. It can either be embedded or linked in the photos, or it will be directly underneath in the dedicated and heavy-contented video segment. There are five tabs to organise the content, in which three of the latest or featured videos are displayed. Once you click a video link, the website will then navigate to the ‘video’ segment of the site.
(Navigation) linking use:
At the top two bars at the very top of the site have two lines of links. The first line is of links to children sites which are still ultimately made from the same corporation that creates NBA.com but just of different leagues. The first link of these is one for its own site, effectively making it a home page link and a prescriber to what the following links will entail.
The second line in the red segment is direct links to the vast content stored on NBA.com with information on all teams, every player, scores, standings, video etc with drop-down boxes of even further links to help you with where you want to go. It then carries into blue on the same bar with links to links not directly related to primary function of the site. It use used the change in colour to highlight that. And as said by Wysocki: ‘Because (visual) transitions establish visual relationships between different screens, they become important choices for composers-and analysers- to consider.
Overall effects:
All the content is extremely comprehensive, and is an indication of the websites intent of being the master advocate for the coverage and promotion of the National Basketball Association. The layout is designed in a supreme fashion, and because of the specific market, they have the deep pockets to do so, and are subsequently on the forefront of cutting-edge web design. It is a bar that is constantly being set.
Reference list:
Nielson, J. (2007), Writing for the web: Research on how users read on the web and how authors should write their web pages. Retrieved 05 November, 2009 from: http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
Wysocki, A. F. (2004). The multiple media of texts: How onscreen and paper texts incorporate words, images and other media. In C. Bazerman and P. Prior, (Eds.) What writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices, pp. 123–163, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum.
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