101–110 of 234 posts
A government site has a job to do, primarily to provide information and contact details, this is more suited to someone peddling organic food.
Government sites by default need to cater for every edge case in terms of accessibility, and so functional takes precedence over pretty every time.
I think I actually prefer http://www.gateshead.gov.uk , which is a lot less "in your face". If I go to a .gov.uk site it's because a need a specific piece of information, I don't need the design getting in the way.
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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.
Usability should be the most important factor of a government website. If it can be pretty and usable, then that's a bonus.
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 think this site from Milwaukee's police department takes the cake: http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com
(Although that's only the news page. The actual gov site for the police department is much plainer.)
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Exactly agreed.
Hi. I see you're new here. "I agree" is a contentless response that adds nothing to the topic at hand. Feel free to post if you have something interesting to say, but "+1" is discouraged here.
However, what I'd have really liked to see is machine readable minutes of the council.
This is something that's a bit of a bug bear having ended up setting up a project awhile back to try and bring-out the minutes etc of the council meetings. We called it MCC Work For You: https://code.google.com/p/mcc-work-for-you/ Sadly within the confines of a hackday we couldn't get as much progress as we'd have liked. However, as a proof of concept it was useful, and did inspire @CountCulture to go forward with his site: http://openlylocal.com/
I'd really like to see progress in this area, and the encouragement of councils to make progress with making the minutes readable. Definitely helpful for investigative journalists, as well exposing the good work of councillors.
I wonder if there's a plan somewhere for this? I couldn't find it on the site.....
Gov't sites should maybe be the opposite of this: as little art as possible and squeaky clean navigation getting you to your desired municipal information as possible so you can do what you came to do then get on with your day.
Anything else is _distracting_.
The designer and developers behind this are talented, of course, and to sell a redesign often involves these sort of hero shots and contemporary flourishes. But a bigger accomplishment would have been to pitch and win a design that is minimally invasive and efficient.
If you are interested in this take a look at: https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples http://www.designweek.co.uk/analysis/govuk-goes-worldwide/30...
It appears there are many UK city sites that are trying to implement these principles. Given that the principles include accessibility guidelines [0] and transparency of intent [1], I'd prefer to see more city sites designed this way. (That is if the sites in question faithfully implement the design principles)
Regarding the site OP linked, even if a little glossy, it's certainly not a disaster of usability. In fact, I tend to believe in the aesthetic-usability effect [2] in the case of not-so-design-savvy users, the added sheen might actually motivate them to use the city portal more often.
[0]https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples#sixth [1]https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples#tenth [2]http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/emotion_design_at.html