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Manchester City Council

manchester.gov.uk

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Re: Manchester City Council

#81

Post by Spooky23 »

nnq wrote: post #57

UX fail: Big useless slider/carouse with the slide captions obscured under the huge pics, way under the fold... and to prevent this big fat carousel from being too low on the page (...but it still is), useful services links are one click away under that 'other services' button, instead of being able to just scroll to them! ...it's amazing how many people totally miss the point of sliders/carousels/slideshows: to sell…

That's what they are doing -- they are trying to "sell" adoption and a city festival.

Re: Manchester City Council

#82

Post by thegoodlab »

DigitalSea wrote: post #70

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 loo…

>This is the perfect example of everything wrong with modern web design.

This seems to be quite the hyperbole. Sure, it might over use some modern design trends, but there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Also, what is wrong with themes on themeforest? Many are built with great design in mind.

More than anything govt. sites are not friendly, don't organize their content well, and do a horrible job at engaging their users. I would say this site does all of three, making it at least a decently designed and well built site.

Re: Manchester City Council

#83

Post by megablast »

DigitalSea wrote: post #70

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 loo…

Not quite sure what your point is? Government websites are not there to show of designers ability, they should be simple.

Re: Manchester City Council

#84

Post by talkingquickly »

DigitalSea wrote: post #70

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 loo…

I'd agree with you on the slider not being a good use of space. But I'd argue that it does get some other things right which a lot of uk government sites fail on.

In particular the simple presentation of the primary services people access with the option to expand out for other less frequently used ones. This is a huge improvement on, for example http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/home.htm

I have to use that site quite regularly and pretty much the only way to get anything is googling site:www.lambeth.gov.uk with the service you're looking for.

Agree accessibility could be an issue although looking at the fairly prominent accessibility section at the top of the site, it does look like they've at least considered it. I don't know enough about accessibility to evaluate whether what they've done is sufficient.

Perhaps holding this up as how they "should" be designed is a step too far but to me it looks like a step in the right direction.

Re: Manchester City Council

#85

Post by marknutter »

EnderMB wrote: post #42

I don't mind a bit of design, as long as the design is fully functional for EVERYONE that needs to use it. Yes, that means people using older browsers/machines, users with restricted vision, anyone that requires access to a council website, or requires information about council services. On IE7, this website works, but it takes a very long time to load, probably because the home page is 1MB, with just under 950k of t…

Yes, but if the site is designed poorly then the user will spend as much time trying to figure out how to navigate around it than they would waiting for this modern version to download. I'm not saying the new one is easier to use, but you get my point.

Re: Manchester City Council

#86

Post by _k »

Government websites need to start with the user. What's the point of showing all the information if it's not relevant ? What's the point of showing me permits that only apply to residents, if they don't apply to a business owner ? What's the point of showing me tax information if I'm a tourist ? They shouldn't make you look at all that. They should make it easy. 3 buttons to start with : resident, tourist, business. Add 3 photo to make it attractive and a few language choices.

Re: Manchester City Council

#88

Post by edbloom »

DigitalSea wrote: post #70

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 loo…

couldn't disagree more. Underneath the "frosting" of the design surface of this site is one of the best user experiences I've had on a government website in a long long time. As someone who is in the middle of building out a large government site at the moment I'm keenly aware of how hard it must have been to bring the Manchester council team along with their design and ux decisions. For me this is the real triumph of this site.

Well done folks.

Re: Manchester City Council

#89

Post by marknutter »

thirsteh wrote: post #2

Similar: https://www.gov.uk/ http://storify.com/GovUK/gov-uk-wins-design-of-the-year-awar...

Now this is what a government site should be. Sterile, cold, lightweight, and functional. Give me as many of the most common links as you can on the front page and make it easy to find the less common stuff. Period.
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