Wildly Appropriate

How Pagelevel IA Could Save Your Daughter

Here in the lake-effect snow zone along side of Lake Michigan, we've had a string of school closings due to blizzard conditions and truly wonderful amounts of snow (measured in feet, not inches). My wife and I have yet to settle into a news media consumption groove in our new GPS coordinatespace... which is an inherently risky way to live for those of us who 1) are parents of school-aged chidren and/or 2) like to think of ourselves as information professionals. Obtaining credible and timely information about school closings before you're elbows-deep in making lunches and sending kids out the door to the schoolbus... That's crucial. And last week, the website of the ABC affiliate in Grand Rapids let me down. Big time. Which in turn caused me to let my daughter down. Big time. The poor thing stood at the corner for 10 minutes in single digits waiting for the bus until somebody drove past and yelled out their window to her your school is CLOSED today.

My little girl. The apple of my eye. Made to suffer humiliation and hypothermia because of crappy page-level IA on the local TV station's school-closings page. I can demonstrate. Exhibit 1: screenshot of the way WZZM's web page with school closing listings lays out presently. Exhibit 2: a sketch I created with pagelevel IA solutions that would have prevented all of this unpleasantness

What do you think? What are some other ways this page could be re-architected to enhance its credibility and usability?