Here at AAN, we’re taking on a redesign of AltWeeklies.com, the Webby-nominated aggregate site featuring the best reporting and arts and entertainment coverage from our members in the U.S. and Canada.

I’ve decided to blog the redesign process here at web.aan.org - to get valuable feedback from readers, and to share the work that we’re doing in the hopes that it might serve as inspiration for redesigns elsewhere.

Step One: Figure Out What You Got and Where You Wanna Go

AltWeeklies.com poses a unique challenge for redesign. The site launched in Summer 2004 as a story-sharing site. The idea was simple in concept - member papers will post articles that they think others might be interested in purchasing. Web forms will automate the purchase, and search tools will make it easier to find content that will work for your paper.

But there were a few bumps in the road - staff-starved alts just didn’t have the time to flll out the form to post links to their material, and in many cases, it was easier to pick up the phone to purchase a story than use the site.

When Senior Editor Jon Whiten joined AAN in January 2006, he began adding lots of stories; rotating top stories in the sections, and highlighting newsworthy articles at the top of the site. Soon it became clear - AltWeeklies.com was a good story sharing site, but it could be a great site for readers to find alternative news and arts coverage.

So, what did we have?

• Human-edited aggregation site, featuring links to the best content in alts.
• Site design optimized for story-purchasing.
• Production process consisting of databasing fields related to the purchase of articles.

Where did we wanna go?

• Destination site for finding alternative news and arts coverage; a one-stop-shop that will drive traffic to our members’ sites, and help them create brand awareness beyond the local or regional level.
• Site design optimized for readers to find content that interests them, while maintaining and improving the ‘members only’ tools that allow editors to purchase stories.
• Streamlined production process that minimizes tedious cutting and pasting work, and only databasing relevant fields.

That’s a very condensed version of the process I used to figure out ‘where we were’ and ‘where we wanna go’ - but having those condensed goals in front of us will serve as barometers during the design process to gauge how well our efforts match up to our users’ needs.

[This post is the first in a series on Redesigning AltWeeklies.com, which can be read in full at web.aan.org/content/redesigning_altweeklies]