Today we've released a new version of our mobile site. For our readers, on the surface the updates are fairly modest. You will see changes to fonts, to spacing, to iconography and to some colour schemes; overall a much cleaner experience.
But under the surface, and for some readers who are selected in certain A/B tests, you'll start to see some larger changes, particularly on the front page. The goal is to learn quickly from you and evolve our website into something offering a much higher quality reading experience, consistent across any device on which you choose to read; mobiles, tablets, desktops or the next device around the corner.
Why do we evolve rather than simply create?
We want to create websites and applications that you'll love and are a delight to use.
By listening to our users and observing how you use the site, we improve incrementally. We release products and features bit by bit, learning as we go along. Some ideas make it through, some don't. The quicker we know what works and what doesn't, the quicker your experience will improve.
From a technical and visual design perspective, our website is now structured to allow us to be flexible in how we display news and stories to our users.
Visual design language
At the heart of this update is the goal to create a consistent and cohesive design language and system across all our products. You will see the first steps of the new visual style on the mobile site. The first small steps towards a new typography and colour language.
Key to this is a new responsive modular grid system. This will be the design 'substrate' for all our digital products. Fundamentally the hierarchy, spacing and relative sizing of content components should be consistent across all breakpoints. In addition it allows us to progressively enhance content for people accessing on devices with larger screens, but still maintain the fidelity of the design so orientation and navigability of articles and fronts should be familiar to users on whatever device they choose to consume the Guardian.
So you will see, the first draft of the new article that is responsive across breakpoints, and the first look at a modular front page. The versions of this at wider breakpoints are still very basic in terms of styling and represents a first test of the responsive modular grid.
- Alex Breuer, Creative Director
Alpha testing programme and responsive design
We have a platform built to be reliable, fast, flexible and designed to be beautiful and usable. We are also very agile in how we update and develop it. Our plan is that this will grow up to be a much better replacement for our current desktop site, but we're a long while away from that.
Our Alpha programme is designed to test out which features we need to introduce to provide that better experience.
Over the next weeks and months, we are looking at the display of our content on wider screens, but currently keeping the organisation of the site the same.
You'll find that if you view our mobile site on desktop, we're starting to explore ways in which the user interface will expand to offer articles that are clear to read with minimal distractions.
Some of you today may also see a mobile front page quite different from the one you're used to. Have a play, see what you think. We're testing how if feels to scroll less for access to more stories, and to give each story on the front more room to breathe. If you like it, read more stories! Come back more often!
New content structure and user features
We want to make it much easier to discover more great content when you visit the Guardian.
The framework we've put in place today will enable us to explore a new content structure and further user features shortly. There are some exciting changes round the corner, so please join us and embrace the evolution!
Please leave comments below if you have any feedback, we'd love to hear from you.