To solve the advertising problem, I created a vertical column on the right side of the design to hold 125×125 pixel ads. This size is smaller than the ads the site currently offers, but I feel this is offset by the positioning of the ads directly next to the content, rather than at the very bottom of the site. The redesign has space for five of these ads.

To solve the readability problem, I changed the central content area into a photo index of the issue’s ten top stories. The featured story gets a wider display area, and the remaining nine form a grid underneath. Furthermore, the “Community News” section, generally found in the middle of the paper, gets a sidebar on the left for excerpts from the first few stories, with a link to the full community news section.

The site’s original horizontal navigation at the top of the site was transformed into three lists of links each in the header. This groups the links by type, and also echoes the grid structure of the article photos underneath.

Finally, I kept the grid layout for the paper’s eight columnists below the main content area, but tweaked the layout a bit to give it a more open look. There is slightly more spacing between each columnist’s grid space, and I got rid of the large borders around each grid space as well.

So, that’s Design 006. Stay tuned for the License to Kill, Design 007.

There’s been some interesting discussion recently on using gaming metaphors to change behavior — everything from the RPG-like metaphors of Weight Watchers, to the underlying psychology of Nike Plus, to the MPG readout of Toyota’s Prius and smart meters in homes reducing energy consumption. The first step in changing your behavior is generally to “instrument” and measure it.

The trend is only accelerating. Newer games (largely on Nintendo platforms) like “Wii Fit” or even “My Stop Smoking Coach with Allen Carr” already use the concept of bringing the player’s real-world life into a literal game, rather than the self-imposed games of the Nike Plus or Toyota Prius.

I think this is an idea that is just screaming for more attention on the web. Find a way to plug real-life homework completion into tangible benefits in an MMORPG and you’ll have a new set of straight-A students in record time. For companies buying their own islands in Second Life, why not implement a “points” system for task completion, or for coming up with truly great, new ideas? Granted, anything like this would require careful study before rushing to implementation; there would be nothing worse than to create an entire culture of living by the game’s rules, when the game may fail to keep up with the realities it is simulating. Nonetheless, this field seems set to become the new definition of “serious games”.