My former colleague Al said that you can't trust the consciousness that caused a problem to be able to fix it.
So with that in mind, here's some rapid and constructive fixes that CNBC could do as damage control for this fiasco. These solutions let them keep their notion of a redesign and the executives/Tim Seymour can continue blithely calling their change “awesome”.
Solutions:
1) Change the ticker text to navy blue instead of pale yellow on light grey, price changes in red/green for up/down
2) Tilt the arrow heads back to conventional up/down orientation
3) Ticker needs the larger type that's currently on the 3 fat boxes currently at the bottom.
4) 3 boxes at the bottom have loads of negative space, yet have to rotate between page 1 and 2 for full data. Put the page 2 data on the page 1 rendering. (Ie: just put “WTI CRUDE 71.40 +0.24%” in the box instead of needing it to flash/animate rollover in two successive boxes)
5) get rid of the long names on the ticker
6) add back the second ticker
7) shrink the peacock and make it a translucent bug
8) time stamp should be on at all times
9) charts and upper two thirds should default to a dark mode theme instead of “neutron star exploding in a blizzard” theme
10) round off price changes to dollars and cents, not 23.8991
11) drop the Twitter handle advertising. The founder hates you and democracy and journalism and advertisers and investors. You don't need to do free marketing for him.
If any CNBC brass happens to be reading this, the above handful of changes would substantially repair this mess and could be implemented by morning. Other changes could be considered and fine tuned over time.
Help Poulton “spend more time with his family” and donate his paycheck to Wounded Warriors or something.
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