Welcome to the new and improved KQED.org! We hope you'll find this site easy to use and packed with the high-quality content you expect from KQED. The redesigned site is focused on better meeting the needs of our users, engaging new audiences, and looking to the future of public media.
Our web producers and developers have been working on the redesign for many months. We've read your emails, looked over testers' shoulders, and evaluated traffic statistics in order to determine the best structure for the redesign. We focused on three main goals: to make the site simpler to use; to better feature our daily coverage of Bay Area food, arts, science, and news; and to make the site easier to update in the future.
We encourage you to explore KQED.org and check out areas that you haven't used before. While the site is always a work in progress, here are some of the most noticeable changes:
Navigation
We've moved all the navigation to the top in a universal header so you can see clearly where you are in the site and move easily between sections.
News, arts, food, science
We provide daily, unique coverage of the Bay Area in four main topic areas: news and comment, arts and culture, food and wine, and science and nature. This coverage is relevant to everyone and we've moved the topic areas to the main navigation to make them easier to find. We hope you'll take advantage of this rich source of news, perspectives, reviews, recipes, events, and more.
Community
Audiences love to interact with KQED and each other in a myriad of ways, from calling into our Forum radio program to submitting Perspectives editorials and flickr photos, from attending heritage month events and teacher training workshops to commenting on stories. We've added a new "Community" tab to make opportunities for interaction more prominent and accessible. These resources can also still be found throughout KQED.org.
Events
Through The Do List, Spark, KQED Family Fun Adventures, and much more, KQED covers numerous Bay Area events each week. We've added a calendar to the "Community" section that lists all these events in one place.
Video and audio
The site includes a new audio player so you can listen to KQED Radio archives without opening a separate media player. We've also created a central location in the top navigation to find all the video and audio from KQED-produced programs, many of which are available via download and podcast. In the coming year, we'll be working with PBS and NPR to make more nationally distributed shows available here as well.
Screen width
Most of you now have your screen resolution set to 1024 pixels or wider, so we've expanded the width of the site to better utilize screen space.
Mobile friendly
While most of KQED.org's traffic comes from desktop computers, people are increasingly using the iPhone, Palm, and other devices to access KQED.org. The new site design runs faster and scales better on smaller screens.
We'd love to hear your feedback on the new design. There are likely to be bugs in an update of this scale, so please let us know what you find at faq@kqed.org. Right now our new site is the featured discussion in the community area. We invite you to engage with the site and let us know what you think. What is working? What isn't? How could the features be improved? What other services would you value from KQED? Share your views at www.kqed.org/community. We look forward to hearing from you.
Tim Olson
Executive Director, Interactive
Northern California Public Broadcasting