Manchester City Council • Hacker News Board

Re: Manchester City Council

#61

Post by RivieraKid » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:10 PM UTC

jerguismi wrote: post #11

No. Goverment web sites should be minimal design & content - black text on white background, no extra graphics. I don't want to pay taxes so that these latte-sipping designers can create cool projects.

You make an assumption that super simple website is the optimal balance between quality and price. I think that it's wrong. First, minimalistic websites with good UX are not significantly cheaper. And second, if the webstite has a lot of visitors, it makes sense to pay lot of money for even small improvements of the UX.

Re: Manchester City Council

#62

Post by yashodhan » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:11 PM UTC

goyalpulkit wrote: post #23

I am really amazed how most of the comments assume that beautiful sites cannot provide the same amount of information as their uglier counterparts.

Most beautiful sites can. This one does not.

Those icons are confusing. Click expand to see the whole list together. What a mess! Ideally they should be using glyphs with much bolder lines, or if they're really set on using the current ones, place each on a solid white circle. Right now they blend in with the text and seem to add to the overall visual noise.

Scrolling down the page, why the hell am I looking at a gigantic picture of a girl staring back at me? That image would be better placed on an interior decorating portfolio, not a city council website. Ideally the images shouldn't be so large and vague, but if they're set on using it, they should've overlayed the image with its headline in a large white font (currently relegated to the invisible location of below the image)

I have issues with their color scheme too. I think most governmental websites should use white as their dominant color, for clarity's sake. GOV.UK is a website that is worth aspiring towards, not this. Very much not this.

Re: Manchester City Council

#63

Post by RyanONeill1970 » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:13 PM UTC

Looks like a template as http://KashFlow.com seems eerily similar. Better that than a custom design though, I imagine it saved a fair bit of money.

Re: Manchester City Council

#64

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:15 PM UTC

ronaldx wrote: post #36

What I typically go to a council website to do: find out the cost of council tax in band D in 2013-14. I am still clicking around... can anyone find it, I wonder?

[deleted]

Re: Manchester City Council

#65

Post by cjfont » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:15 PM UTC

Another example of a well-designed gov't site:

http://www.consumerfinance.gov/

Re: Manchester City Council

#66

Post by ses » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:15 PM UTC

http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/200028/council_tax/5615/ge... 404 - not so sure

Re: Manchester City Council

#67

Post by RivieraKid » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:15 PM UTC

laumars wrote: post #39

blowski wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should public services be ugly?

Why do people insist that services which exist purely for quick searching of information have to be design-orientated and pretty? I hear the same arguments about developer sites (eg PHP manual) but frankly I prefer layouts with an emphasis on conveying content rather than watering down that content behind a wall of epic sized fonts, fading effects and huge scrollable areas. There's a time and place for each design ch…

Because it improves people's lifes. The main purpose of governent is to improve people's lifes.

But minimal websites doesn't have to be ugly of course.

Re: Manchester City Council

#68

Post by apidoc » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:15 PM UTC

Design is nice, but "baaaam" too much for what the page is and for who the page is. Why i have to click to open the services? Better show them directly.

Re: Manchester City Council

#69

Post by huhtenberg » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:16 PM UTC

How come this and all .gov.uk sites mentioned in the comments include Google Analytics scripts?

I would imagine that the sharing of the data collected on government websites with 3rd parties be rather strictly regulated. Especially when it's collected as a part of a tracking infrastructure that spans beyond said sites.

Re: Manchester City Council

#70

Post by DigitalSea » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:17 PM UTC

I applaud the change and thinking outside of the box, but the Manchester City Council website looks like a $45 Wordpress theme off of Themeforest. The slider appears to offer no value to the site other than taking up a massive amount of room without really justifying its existence. I'm not a designer, I'm a developer and I am struggling to understand the reasoning behind that slider.

While I agree that the trendy look of the site is better than most Government sites, it tries too hard to the point the change and potential this site could have had is gone. The reason Government websites are usually ugly is not because Government's are afraid of change or can't justify the cash it's because there are content accessibility guidelines to adhere too. And when you've got to make your content accessible to people with disabilities well your options can be somewhat limited (especially colour use).

This is the perfect example of everything wrong with modern web design. Instead of thinking, "What can we NOT add to this site design" designers seem to be thinking, "How many full screen images, rounded corners, parallax effects, CSS animations, Javascript effects and large amounts of custom fonts can we cram into this site?"

I can foresee a lot of issues for people with eyesight problems on this site, aren't Governments supposed to adhere to WCAG rules and a lot more stricter than non-Government websites do? The images don't even have alt tags on them, Web Developer common sense rule #1 — Always put alt tags on images, especially when they're being used as icons in content sections, wow.