AltWeeklies.com is the edited aggregation site of the best content from Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) member papers. I worked with AAN staffers and designer/programmer Ben Millen to conceptualize and spec the redesign.

We worked to conceptualize a modified folksonomy; creating tag-based topic pages (e.g. environmentalism) that would highlight the evergreen, topical nature of alt-weekly content, which has a longer shelf life than a traditional news article. With topic pages, we hoped to increase the amount of editorial inventory exponentially; offering a more in-depth user experience than traditionally grouped section pages (e.g. music, news).

To increase the ease of site production, which had been a manual cutting and pasting process, I speced the creation of an auto-import with a moderation queue and scheduling mechanism.

Blogging the redesign: