As a designer, I’ve struggled as how to best contribute to our blog. Most web design articles speak to people who aren’t designers and tend to focus on the obvious. I don’t intend to add to that.

So I decided to attempt a redesign of the USA Today homepage as companion piece to our recommendations to the newspaper industry. Senior designer Jei Park and I sat down and figured if we’re going to talk the talk, we might as well start walking as well. A couple of notes:

(1) In putting this together, we included every element of the current USA Today site. We wanted to come up with something that could actually be implemented, not something so conceptual that it could never see the light of day. In other words, we didn’t take the easy way out.

(2) We chose USA Today because it is the most circulated paper in the country, and which has had the same design for a couple of years. The point is to show what we think these things should look like. As a designer, the last thing I’m interested in is criticizing the work of other designers. That isn’t the point here.

(3) We want to hear your thoughts. If you like it, say so. If you hate it, say so. If you have changes you’d like to see, say so. If you think we’ve missed something, say so. We intend to act on the feedback and come up with a revised version in the next few weeks that takes into account what you have to say. The goal of this is to start a conversation about what newspaper websites should look like.

The design process almost always happens behind closed doors. Let’s see what happens when we get lots of good feedback from cross section of smart people. Click here or on the image above to see the full view. You can read Todd’s explanation of the features presented here. Tell us what you think.