Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
medium.com
Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
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Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
#2That's a great initiative. Being from a country that changes the URLs of a bunch of ministries (and breaks half of them) each time a new government takes charge, I envy it!
Now, for improved consistency, adopt the metric system.
Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
#3The Medium article says to visit the site for the standards.[1]
That yields:
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[1] https://playbook.cio.gov/designstandards/
Update: now it's up.
Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
#4That's a great initiative. Being from a country that changes the URLs of a bunch of ministries (and breaks half of them) each time a new government takes charge, I envy it! Now, for improved consistency, adopt the metric system.
Which country?
Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
#5The Medium article says to visit the site for the standards.[1] That yields: MAX.gov Application Unavailable If you are seeing this message and it is not Sunday 2AM-8AM ET then please contact MAX Support by clicking here. If you’re trying to access MAX Community, please use our snapshot site: MAX Snapshot Community Site "MAX.gov" appears to be some kind of in-house cloud service for the Federal government. [1] https:…
And now it's down again.
Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
#6Hopefully this guide will be updated as time goes on to stay relevant as technology changes. Otherwise in a few years from now, everything will look outdated again.
Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
#7The Medium article says to visit the site for the standards.[1] That yields: MAX.gov Application Unavailable If you are seeing this message and it is not Sunday 2AM-8AM ET then please contact MAX Support by clicking here. If you’re trying to access MAX Community, please use our snapshot site: MAX Snapshot Community Site "MAX.gov" appears to be some kind of in-house cloud service for the Federal government. [1] https:…
And now it's down again.
It came back up, but in case it goes down again here's a link to the GitHub for it: https://github.com/18F/web-design-standards
Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
#8That's a great initiative. Being from a country that changes the URLs of a bunch of ministries (and breaks half of them) each time a new government takes charge, I envy it! Now, for improved consistency, adopt the metric system.
Plus one for "adopt the metric system". There have been past attempts to do so, but I think it's a lost cause.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
#9When design becomes a standard, is its purpose not lost?
Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards
#10OK, now that it's back up, let's take a look at the examples. There's a "register to vote" page, but that's trivial. Here's a more difficult one - a mockup of a Veterans Administration form.[1] This is clearly for use by a Government employee, not the public.
(The first question one asks is, if an appeal is "certified", why does it also have to be "activated" by a human before anything happens? But that's the organization's problem, not web design.)
It's a high-contrast layout, to support the visually impaired. Although it does have both white on black and black on white buttons, visually it seems OK.
The form has a pull-down for "Confirm type action". This isn't a "Confirm" button, it's a selection option, for selecting the type of bureaucratic action. There are several documents mentioned, "Form 8", "Form 9", etc. These are in bold sans-serif blue text. The "NOD" document is apparently missing, so you couldn't view it, but the text for it is the same as for the documents you can view. At the end of each line is the word "Change", in the same font and color. It's not clear if "Form 8" is clickable, leading to a view of the form. "Change" is presumably clickable, and ought to lead to a popup. It's not clear whether changes commit immediately, or when the final buttons at the bottom ("Reassign" or "Activate Appeal") are clicked.
The "POA" heading is misaligned. You can tell they used table-less design - things don't line up right.
This form is useful only if the user has paper materials on hand against which they are checking. Functionally, this form is exactly equivalent to something on a green-screen IBM 3270 terminal from 30 years ago, which may be what it is emulating.
This is their example of good Government web design.
[1] https://playbook.cio.gov/designstandards/assets-styleguide/i...
