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The portal was to offer programmed and timely content as well as customizable tools and services like Stocks, Community products, Calendar, Sports scores, Yellow pages, Maps and Directions.

Approach: Take the core products from the Zip2 CityGuide, which included an Entertainment guide, Movies, Restaurant info, Maps, Directions, Yellow pages, Clubs, Weather, Polls and add Photo Albums, the core AltaVista Search, a robust Money offering with complete Stock Portfolio capabilities as well as featured news developed in the news room and through feeds from the major providers a the time - including The Washington Post, AP, Reuters, ZDNet, The Industry Standard and a host of others.

The product design group - consisting of myself in the role of Chief IA, another IA, several designers and art directors and the creative director - teamed with IAs and designers from USWeb/CKS to architect the entire portal and develop a rich modular grid design that could be flexible enough to work in the existing Zip2 CMS system and continue to adapt and grow over time as new content areas were added.

After several weeks of exploration, card sorting, wireframe usability testing and intense work with the Programming team, the portal offering was split up over 4 tabs with the utility type tools being on the Find Anything tab, all the Community offerings being on the Community tab and the pure customizable member page being the My Live! tab.
View PDF (88k)of all tab wireframes

The Live! homepage was personalizeable but not customizeable. Users could edit preferences for individual content modules but couldn't add or delete them from the page. The homepage featured Top Stories and major headlines as well as Stocks, Scores, My Calendar, Weather, Horoscope, My Links/bookmarks, Live Cam, a daily Poll and Lottery numbers. Find Anything tab contained Maps, Directions, Yellow Pages, Babelfish translation service, Find A Movie, Find a Person and Address and the AltaVista Search and Browse. The Community tab contained Clubs, rotating featured clubs, Chat, Live Chat, Homepages, PhotoAlbums and featured photo albums and my photo friends. The MyLive! tab allowed a user to take any module from the main three tabs and create their own custom page. A single username and login allowed access to every area, application and utility on the site.

Once the site content was organized, the team created a patterned visual and organizational language for the different page types. Setup pages - forms that set preferences or dynamic applications - were treated in a consistent layout and visual manner. Sections were given a palette and the grid structure was organized and colored in order to create prominence and emphasis for different content areas. We also developed a system for recirculation modules and partner link modules. The colors and placement of content modules was systematically explored and refined as the project was completed and iterated.
View PDF (77k) of wireframes for various setup pages

Our work did not include working with the other divisions - Search and Shopping.

Outcome: The Live! site went from not existing in September 1999 to have over 16 million pages views a week at it's peak. Release October 1999 - Shutdown December 2000