A government website showcases a design that is leaps and bounds ahead of any other government site we can think of, and HN's top comment casually dismisses it.
To rewrite something you said: "This is the perfect example of everything wrong with [HN comments]."
I, for one, am floored that someone in city government was able to rise above the bureaucracy and ship something truly useful and delightful for citizens. I would love nothing more than to meet the people involved and buy them a pint. Well done, guys.
The first few months I was reading HN comments (which wasn't that long ago, just about two years, but feels like ages), I was actually feeling pumped-up and motivated to start my own biz (although I now know I'm pretty hopeless at it). These days, it feels like HN is just full of well-spoken and highly-educated stop energy.
Clearly there are a group of elite web designers, UI and UX specialists that parade this site, who, unsurprisingly, have empty profiles. How else are we supposed to see their portfolio of exceptional work so we know what to aspire to?
This layout might look more modern than the 1998 frames we were expecting, but from a usability standpoint, it's still weak. If your average government site has a lefthand sidebar that contains all of the navigation, that in itself is better than making your user move their eyes all over the page, forcing them to click on a button to even see the rest of the options available. On top of that, they don't look like links (they don't even have a hover state), which is frustrating enough for me, but could be entirely too confusing for average users.
Additionally, that large image is useless; the "View more services" should be visible without needing to click into it.
You cannot use argumentum ad hominem to this point. If people has to shown their portfolios or other stuff to prove their skillmanship you're only wasting time and finding on the wrong place to prove your points, since those designs may not apply or be used as a good example to counterattack the main point here.
Unfortunately, the world is so complicated that we can't make an informed decision based on speech/writing alone, and verification of achievements is one of the easiest and most accurate ways to judge credibility.
To which I say: Who gives a shit.
I say the same here. The site looks fantastic, and I would love if my local municipality had something as clean and functional, whether or not it looks like a wordpress theme.
Too many want to be world weary. They want to announce that they can see under the covers and thus are above it. I don't get it.
I'm very sorry, but I don't agree with either.
Is that OK with you? Am I allowed to have my own opinion and express it? Am I some sort of idiot because I don't agree? Am I expected to say nothing?
I would say why, but clearly you would find it predictable and all :(
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.
They use a proper content structure with appropriate headline levels, buttons are large enough for people that can't use a mouse properly. The contrast in the default color scheme looks fine and they provide a high-contrast color scheme. They even offer to switch the font to accomodate dyslexics, but fail to include a dyslexic font[2]. The layout falls apart a little if you use the high contrast scheme with large letter-spacing and comic sans, but it still includes all functions, so that's forgiven.
The fact they don't provide alt-tags for all images is totally fine: The images are just visual add-ons to the links that are provided directly underneath the images, so any screen reader will pick up the links and not the images. Quite to the contrary, providing empty alt-tags as they do will hide the images from screen reader and will remove mental clutter. The "always add alt-tags" mantra is - as so many matras in the web design world - wrong when taken at face value.
Forms are designed well with proper placeholders and labels.
Now, there's much more to accessibility than this - for example the writing style and text complexity, but it's obvious they have given accessibility more than a passing thought and taken it into consideration. One thing is certain however: Accessibility is not a roadblock for good design.
[1] Please note that this is only the 10-minute-tick-the-most-important-boxes check :)
[2] maybe for legal reasons, including dyslexic fonts is a legal nightmare with two warring factions
I will note that the non-uniform letterforms of Comic Sans have made it a popular typeface for dyslexics, which is likely why it's a choice.[1][2][3]
[1]http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/about-dyslexia/further-informa... [2]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11582548 [3]http://www.dyslexia.ie/information/computers-and-technology/...
I assume that's the legal situation to which you are referring.
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.
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.
People use templates in successful projects all the time. Don't generalize. I'm sure a lot of sites have found success in their niche using themeforest as well.
A complete theme usually has a lot more than just tools, conventions and code examples. It's a complete design, and content implementation, all you have to do is stick in your logo and copy and you're done. Not exactly the same process as using a framework.
Although I also dislike frameworks (Bootstrap high on that list) for the same reasons (shoehorning is encouraged) I don't think it's an appropriate comparison.
Templates work fine if you simply reverse the order here: think carefully about how you want the site to look and work, then look to see if there is a template that is reasonably close. If there is, it's a huge savings in cost and time--even if you have to alter the template a bit. Graphic design and front-end coding are expensive by the hour.
There is a lot of convergence in website goals. Blogs aren't that different from each other, portfolios aren't that different from each other. Sure, you'll take on more constraints than building your own from scratch, but you also might be a lot faster, which often outweighs everything.
I've used templates to great effect many a time.
I don't think UX and IA can be minimized and made generic enough to fit into a one-size-fits-all theme. You still need to be thoughtful in how you design and display information.
I've gotta disagree simply because a lot of the people posting to ThemeForest are just trying to make a buck on their hobby - so many of those themes look exactly alike; they're not spending significant time thinking about the usability of their designs and just applying trends. TemplateMonster back-in-the-day was more reminiscent of designers with experience creating unique enough templates to be modified/used for multiple types of purposes.
Well done folks.
They've used blue on links, clearly the best color for color disability and the contrast is really nice on the homepage and other sections. I do not foresee any kind of eyesight problems.
The rest of the stuff you mention as a catastrophe are really just minor problems. They can be solved without problems. Most of the images aren't objects on the document, they're just background images on span elements, so no trauma for the disabled.
Buttons, if rounded, better studies has shown, and this website is not using parallax, so what's the point of attacking designers who clearly didn't abused of the latests and hottest webdesign techniques.
I'm always and each time amazed how much of a difference to reading and comprehension a well designed page makes over a jumbled mess. That's what designers are good at and that's the value they bring - not the fancy looking bling* that most people associate with designers.
That website is simpler than the rest, tell me how you will reduce the noise.
If you mean the 3 panel graphics then it seems pretty obvious. They want to focus attention on a small number of important things. They can change this slider once a month to give prominence to different things throughout the year.
Actually, no. The icons are correctly labeled with text and many of the images are CSS background images (which can't have ALT text anyway.) In their usage, a screen reader would sound out the text on screen, providing a user with enough information to make a browsing decision.
Even if the images were inline rather than applied in the background, you need to use ALT decisively. ALT text that repeats what is already a link label can be more redundant than helpful.
Well done.
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.)
Everything looks like a theme now-days, and oversized as well because it's responsive. Some stuff is just useless and every designer keeps saying ' less is more, less is more ' while designing stuff like this? Less IS more when you know how to use it, when to use it, and what it really means.
I would give this website 2/10 for their effort.
How? Well, we don't require that stairs be accessible for everyone. We require a ramp or an elevator in addition to the stairs.
Perhaps the standards for web accessibility should change so that websites will have an easily accessible alternative design for those who need it and the standard design for everyone else.
Yes, the only thing better than inexpensive availability would be free and open availability.
Add to it being on wordpress, and this could potentially make future implementations cheap and easy.
http://www.manchester.gov.uk/accessibility/settings
Really though, the chances that tertiary government - like the ones who manage a city - keep a website designer on staff seem low. What would he do the other 360 days of the year? If they want to buy something like that, chances are it has to go out to tender. IT departments in non-IT firms are likely to be predominant busy with dealing with network issues, making computers run far too slowly, and issuing new mice and keyboards.
Heck, their CMS is certainly government procurement service. They advertise the fact on their site:
http://jadu.net/gcloud/cloudstore
The real question is why a bunch of councils don't stick their money together and lock a bunch of programmers up in a basement to make cool tools for them.... That would seem the obvious thing to do - what are the odds that your council has a demand that no other council has?
Working for one council means working for a committee, working for multiple is probably working for a committee of committees.
Decentralisation and out-sourcing are central words for the public society. The idea of bringing this in-house and sharing between other councils is probably a couple of pay-grades above the person on the comms team who is in charge of the website. The person in charge of the website may not even be a "technical" person and have time to think of all the cool possibilities.
MySociety make fixmystreet for councils (the open source fixmystreet.com but hooked into councils existing systems + extra reporting), I'm sure there are plenty of private companies making these things and selling them.
I'm not a designer either, but I know that what you seem to call a "slider" is a "carousel".
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.