Reaction From LATimes.com Editor Richard Core
Your eyetracking study, in regards to Enrique's Journey, offers some disappointing findings which, alas, would appear to be valid. I would agree that a major fault of the design is the lack of an obvious entry point. Funny thing is, we did that on purpose--and, according to this study, it appears to have backfired. I hope we've learned a few things since 2002.

With Enrique's Journey we basically were handed the challenge of putting online a book, both in its length and narrative structure. We feared that, given their generally short attention spans, our office-bound users would be turned away if they realized the time commitment required for the story. So we put lots of entry points and enticements on the cover page, figuring that if we could hook them on one or two info nuggets, they just might be pulled in for more. But, as your study shows, all of those entry points carry pretty much the same visual weight. Nothing reaches out and says "Start the Journey Here!" ... Our bad.

The Flash video box, by the way, initially had an autostart feature. But then, out of concern for the office workers who might get busted by the video's sound coming out of their speakers, we made it user-initiated.

When we first posted Enrique's Journey, our online news colleagues raved about the design. (It IS pretty to look at, no?) It's won a couple of awards and been a finalist in some other contests. Academics and researchers have praised it. No doubt the Pulitzer-winning quality of the story and photos had much to do with that. Yet, the traffic through the package never was much to get excited about. Perhaps now we know that the design was a contributing factor to the less-than-hoped performance?

I also want to throw in what appears to be a differentiating factor between this project and the others in your study. The others appear to have been built after all the content was at the disposal of the respective sites' producers. Although Enrique's Journey took two years in the reporting, writing and photographing, our print colleagues were still making changes right up until deadline on most days (damn perfectionists!). This meant we had to structure the package so that the various elements could be plugged in fairly quickly as each of the six chapters was unveiled over eight days.

All that said, we appreciate the work you've done with this study. It's prompted a lot of discussion here As we continue to develop our multimedia offerings we'll keep the eye-tracking study in mind.

Richard Core
Editor, latimes.com