We were asked to review the new BETA .gov site by the BBC. They wanted us to cast a quick (1hr) glance at it and comment on how it improves the user experience.
I realise that the new site is the culmination of millions of hours of work. It is the ‘baby’ of its creators, so any comment I make may be seen by its creators as idiotic – that my understanding of its purpose and design are irrelevant and baseless. I accept that, but also suggest that is the exact reason why we were asked – to provide a viewpoint of the ‘average user’.
I have included the copy I provided for review to the BBC. As always, not all of what is written is published, and what is published is often not given a wider context. I accept that is what happens, but the beauty of digital is that I too now have a platform to share a fuller perspective.
Review of the new .gov site. – on Firefox, IE9, Chrome & Safari (iPhone)
The new .gov site is an improvement on the direct.gov site, but the bar wasn’t set too high in the first place… The new site initially looks quite different, with a more concise front page, but even that still doesn’t have a clear call to action. The new visual impact loses its purpose when it isn’t placed in a broader context – what is the new ‘look’ trying to do ? This is less about the experience, and more about the purpose of the site / portal. Perhaps this is unkind to the developers as its purpose will become clearer over time.
Once you have navigated away from the front page (search), it is back to business as usual – it looks like the same information architecture, but with a ‘pretty looking icon’ next to some titles, but these aren’t defined / introduced and they do not make it easier to navigate in any way.
On ‘detail’ pages there are numerous fonts used (up to 4 on some pages) – I would say this is poor planning / design, but perhaps more worryingly we’ve had anecdotal evidence that certain fonts such as Georgia are known to prove problematic to dyslexics when reading numbers. There are many uses of Georgia across the site.
The predictive search seen on the front page is nice, but is not contextualised as you progress, so the same search presents the same results wherever you are. Contextualised search should be provided here.
On mobile devices the site remains faithful to the desktop experience, but that isn’t all good news – fonts and buttons are small enough to be useless. New mobile / touch paradigms like Microsoft Metro UI show how content can be repurposed to many interaction archetypes.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that this should have been launched in 2007 – it is a prettier brochure, and not a space where communities can grow… The power of digital media is connectivity – linking, sharing, joining and so on. There is none here – you cant share a page, you cant discover charities, organisations, communities that exist to help and support. It is the opposite of the big society as it only offers official govt information – where are the rich, vibrant and informed communities that might help me ??
So, there you go. I was asked for an opinion, and gave it to the best of my best ability in the time provided.
I appreciate that there is so much to shout about its creation, and how it suggests a future where HM Govt are knowledgeable and confident enough to create digital platforms using the best tools and techniques (open source, collaborative, cloud based etc etc), but I do feel that it is outdated in its purpose and nature. That is not the fault of its creators, but shows how much they can hope to influence the culture(s) of Govt departments. I know this takes time – years, and countless “project wins”. Martha Lane Fox calls for revolution, so this may well be a spark that lights a fire…
I spoke to her about the need to reflect the activity and communities in the digital world at the FT Innovate conference last year. One or two days before, I had been sent a link to a Reddit forum that was simultaneously upsetting and inspiring.
The link is here, but be warned, the topic is “If you knew your child was going to be disabled, would you have had an abortion?” It is upsetting for all of the reasons you would expect, and then some. More surprisingly it is inspiring because it is filled with insight, support and experience. What struck me most was the clear sense that the decision was wider than the parents alone, that there were clear support structures provided, and where further support was needed. In short it was a policy discussion more informed and more productive than any other.
It’s this vibrancy, this sense of ownership and community that I think is the missing link between .gov and the real web (real world). They are not alone – include almost all large ‘old world’ organisations in the same category. Few have migrated to a more ‘social’ model and some are actively trying to stymie it (SOPA). The latest example of this is McDonalds who launched #McDstories on twitter. Looking for heart-warming stories of how a beef patty changed people’s lives, they were instead inundated by people sharing poor labour management or destruction of natural resources stories.
Large organisations are used to controlling the channel(s) through which they communicate. They find it difficult to ‘introduce’ themselves to conversations taking place because they never had to introduce themselves before – they had paid for a ‘spot’ and all they had to do was shout as loud as possible.
The new paradigm of social media, social innovation and social business is one that won’t be diminishing in the near future, the challenge to ‘us’ is to make sure ‘they’ make it even more social in the future.
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