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Manchester City Council

manchester.gov.uk

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Re: Manchester City Council

#111

Post by oceanician »

oceanician wrote: post #108

I feel like it's a step improvement, and will help people use the site. 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…

Lots of pdfs with no alternatives here: http://www.manchester.gov.uk/site/scripts/meetings_index.php

Re: Manchester City Council

#112

Post by noselasd »

pessimizer wrote: post #98

The only reason that this has been driven up to the top of HN is because of its title. If it had been titled "A Nicely Designed Government Site", it would have gone nowhere. As for the site, I can't see how the navigation would have me pulling out any fewer hairs than any other government site, but it is very large, multicolored and slidey, so if I were putting together an iPad commercial I might use it in a couple o…

I'm sure it all depends on what info you're after. But the site here have the typical info that people are after regarding the gouvernment on the front page. Most of the links there are related to the reasons we have government at all.

That's not how most government sites are structured in my experience, though I'm not from the UK.

Re: Manchester City Council

#113

Post by agilescale »

footpath wrote: post #106
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. 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 think this site from Milwaukee's police department takes the cake: http://www.milwaukee…

I can see why the lady at the bottom right was rolling her eyes.

Re: Manchester City Council

#114

Post by josefresco »

thegoodlab wrote: post #82
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 t…

"Also, what is wrong with themes on themeforest? Many are built with great design in mind."

That's the issue with cheap templates. They are designed and built by web people with no connection to your organization. You then buy this template and shoehorn your own content, and hopefully goals into a template without ever thinking about what your site should look or work like. Templates serve a purpose at the extreme low end of the market but soon every organization should graduate to a process that does not begin with a template.

Would you use a template as the basis for your entire software project? Would you use a template for your business plan? Certainly there's a case to be made for both, but neither is ideal for anyone seeking success.

Re: Manchester City Council

#115

Post by harshreality »

ohwp wrote: post #78
harshreality wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find anything on those two pages without first mentally parsing the layouts? On the first link, the search bar is in the middle of the damned page, even though the site seems designed around search (meaningful static nav is confined to one element, the Information mouseover at the top)! By comparison, the manchester site is dead simple, and search is at the top corner where it should be. That style of desi…

"... search is at the top corner where it should be." Did you ever visit the Google homepage? Why should search be at the top corner? I don't know if you understand Dutch but since text is part of the interface maybe this is why you are having issues with the design? "My problem with the manchester site is the poor use of vertical space, not the basic design style." Well I was talking about exactly this. The Manchest…

The search box goes in a top corner normally because putting it elsewhere disrupts the content layout or takes unnecessarily long to find. If there's no other content, the search box can go anywhere.

I use google chrome which translates the page well enough for me to understand.

There are too many visually distinct sections on those Dutch websites for someone who isn't familiar with the site to find anything quickly. There are non-tech-savvy folks for whom anything more complex than the manchester site, or Google's front page search box, is too complex for them to deal with. They wouldn't be able to visually scan the Dutch pages for what they want. Whether it's lack of technical familiarity, lack of attention span, or something else, I don't know. Lots of text divided up into arbitrary sections simply doesn't work well for them.

How is the manchester site lacking an overview? It has four major categories near the top, another tier of categories which expands into 20 categories with one click, and if that doesn't find what you're looking for, or you're lazy, you can type what you want into the conveniently located search box.

I agree that the manchester site be improved (most of the stuff at the bottom should be eliminated or turned into links in the top bar), but I think it's closer to ideal than the two sites you linked are.

Re: Manchester City Council

#117

Post by nfoz »

Please tell me you're joking.

The #1 priority of government websites should be accessibility, not looking cool with whatever garbage unusable web trends are popular du jour and supported by only a handful of desktop browsers running on modern hardware.

Re: Manchester City Council

#118

Post by josefresco »

scott_riley wrote: post #20
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.

I drink espressos.

Fun fact: The primary ingredient of a latte is: espresso.

Re: Manchester City Council

#119

Post by DanBC »

laumars wrote: post #105
RivieraKid wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd have to be pretty shallow to think that aesthetics are the be-all and end-all of improving peoples lives (and particularly in the case of government websites where they're just a tool; people just use them as a means to an end). Usability should be the most important factor of a government website. If it can be pretty and usable, then that's a bonus.

"Design" means two things.

To people like me and you it means "stupid things that prevent me from doing what I want. Things that are only there because someone thinks they look nice"

To good designers it means "very carefully made choices that make information easier to find; that make websites easier to use; and that have the added benefit of making things less ugly."

I say that a book is often a great example of minimal design. Designers point out that books have hundreds of years of cumulative design - the fonts have been iterated; the layout and the margins and the indents and everything has all had decades of iteration.

I get the feeling that you and parent both agree and are now talking past each other.

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