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Bloomberg parallax scrolling

8 years ago from Nicholas Mandelbaum, Just a regular designer

  • Brendan McDonaldBrendan McDonald, 8 years ago (edited 8 years ago )

    I found this dizzying. News sites in general don't have very strong hierarchy; if you compare the front page of a newspaper in print to the same publication's presence online you'd find that the online version always crams more in--to the detriment of the user experience, IMO. Front pages and magazine covers are pretty focused experiences; news website are not.

    I think the parallax effect, while pretty and smooth, calls quite a bit of attention to itself and keeps me from consuming the main block of content--which is generally considered to be the most important content. Any time you break a pattern, you tell users something is special. Since only a slim part of the page gets the parallax treatment, that content becomes elevated in hierarchy. Since this content is summary content, the pattern is misapplied here. I'm not sure what advantages this approach offers over more common patterns, but the downsides seem very obvious indeed.

    There may be something worth exploring in this scrolling pattern, but I certainly hope it is not implemented elsewhere as it is on this site.

    Edit: for clarity

    9 points
    • Jeremy Miller, 8 years ago

      I think the UI would benefit from reversing the parallax direction; i.e. have the sidebar be the "far" point of reference and the main content the "near" point. I totally get why you find it dizzying - the implication with their implementation is that the sidebar is closer to the foreground than the main content.

      0 points
    • Andrea PeratoAndrea Perato, 8 years ago

      That is a good point of view, I didn't actually realize how much attention I was giving to the column, even tho It should be a side section. "Any time you break a pattern, you tell users something is special." is a good quote :) I think it would benefit if the color of the titles wasn't purple. How else could the UX improve? Anyway I reckon it would take really just a little time to get used to it and put focus on the rest of the page.

      0 points
    • Miguel Solorio, 8 years ago

      I agree that the scrolling sidebar is distracting. I wasn't able to read anything because my eyes kept bouncing back to the sidebar.

      0 points