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I've had a keen interest in the Attorney General's Department for a number of years now.
That's not because they may - or may not - be the government department most likely to have James Bond, Triple X or the Men In Black working for them.
It's because they do a lot of important things across a range of areas, but rarely seem to get much credit for it.
For example, while their name suggests a dry, boring legal portfolio - and indeed they do have a large role in the intersection between Australia's legal system and government - they are also responsible for developing emergency management systems and supporting emergency management services, which become pretty important to people when there is an earthquake, flood or other disaster.
They also look after the Family Relationship Centres, which play an enormous role in supporting families around the country and manage Comlaw, THE source for legislative information in Australia and Australian Law Online, equally the source for legal and justice related information.
That's not to mention counter-terrorism, or engagement with the justice systems across the Pacific.
These are all important and useful activities and would make the AG's Department a very interesting place to work.
But what have they done to their website?
The other day I visited the main AG's website for the first time in awhile and was surprised at what I found.
I have my views on attractive and usable web design and they don't match what the AG's Department has done to their site.
The URL icon in the web address bar is cute - a scale of justice, much clearer than using a Commonwealth crest which suffers at a 16x16 pixel size. Unfortunately this was also the high point for me.
The site is coloured a very bright orange, fading through to blue with black highlights. The crest is nicely positioned at a good size at top left, but doesn't blend well with the page - it sits on a solid dark background and has harsh lines separating it from the rest of the design.
The website homepage has more than 70 visible links, organised into topic area throughout the left half two-thirds of the website - basically exposing much of the site navigation, using up most of the visible area to do it rather than neat dropdown menus.
It does have a right-hand column with several news items, Ministerial links and a couple of publications.
However that left hand area with all those links! It doesn't make the site very attractive or usable, it's simply overwhelming!
I did go to the site for a specific purpose, but after one look at the homepage, I fled back to Google and searched for the content instead - finding it within seconds.
I think that many other users similarly overwhelmed with options would react in a similar way.
So what mistake has AG's made - the concept that if links are good, more links are better?
That a home page, being largely a navigation page, should simple be a list of links?
Certainly that was the peak of user design back in the mid-90s, when Yahoo launched with a groundbreaking list of lists, neatly categorised by type. But I do not see any of today's popular sites taking a similar approach - perhaps the world has moved on.
I'm sure the department had good intentions for this design and was aiming to making it easier for the many audiences that visit the AG's site, for many different reasons.
However I do not think the approach selected will maximise the utility of the site - and look out for that 'bounce' rate!
Bounce rate (From Google Analytics' definition)
Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
When good websites turn bad | Tweet |
Monday, June 16, 2008
Redesigning sites to put customers at the centre of the universe | Tweet |
From our latest usability review, my agency's customers are saying that our website is looking a bit old, tired and dated.
They say it is very "about us" focused, covered in agency news items screaming 'look at me!', rather than "about them" - the customers!
Certainly many of our news messages are important (to customers), but news isn't what draws our customers to the website, it is information they become aware of when they go there to use our tools.
In the current design news is positions front and centre - where people look for important content. However the tools and resources important to our customers are pushed to the fringes - the far right or the bottom of the site.
So we're listening to our customers and I've received a go-ahead to make some changes.
The scope is the homepage and overall site template - we're not touching the primary navigation or content throughout the site.
I have set four rules for my team:
- Put customer needs first
- Use less words
- Minimise disruption
- Lift the look
Use less words:
Our home page is currently text rich - we want to cut down the words to the essential information to help customers move deeper into the site.
Minimise disruption:
We don't want to make regular visitors work harder to find tools. Even if we make tools easier to reach, this can make it harder for regulars who are habitualised to finding specific tools in particular places. This particularly goes for our main navigation, search and secure site login - none of which we want to make harder to find.
We are prepared to cause some disruption - you cannot adjust an interface without affecting some people - but we want to keep it as minimal as possible while achieving the other goals of the work.
Progress so far....
So far our web designer has put a lot of time into understand how people use our site, using all our data sources, and even asking a few real people.
From his preliminary rough design, we've had a very productive collaboration session to develop a wireframe (pic below) of how the homepage should be structured, using input from our customer research and website stats.
I've also conducted some preliminary ad hoc user testing to verify that this is regarded as a better design (it is from my small sample).
We're now fleshing out the wireframe to develop an appropriate interface pallette based on our corporate colours and fit the words we have to have before getting the design into a formal review process.
All opinions welcome!
New homepage initial wireframe
Key features
- Crest at top left
- Top menu realigned to left
- Search untouched
- Left/bottom menus untouched
- Secure login unmoved but more visible
- Important tools centred, in logical groups
- Frequently used tools buttons at right
- News items below tools with less text
- Subscribe options besides news
Has eGovernment stalled at the half-way point? | Tweet |
Reading up on one of my favourite eGov blogs, In the Eye of the Storm, I found this post from February with some great slides and commentary on how far e-government has gone, but how little has changed in the last few years, e-government 3.0.
Edited 16/06: This article is further reinforced by this article in ITWeek, UK e-government fails to make the grade
Is this the same experience as we have in Australia?
It's now common to get information from government online, it's also common to transact with government online. However, can we interact with government online yet?
As in the UK, in Australia government appears to have been very slow about taking the next step - to actually converse with our customers online.
I'm happy to say that my agency is taking baby steps into interacting on forums, and we've talked about providing web-based text or voice chat to interact with customers, but are still some big steps away from this.
If the name of the game is customer service, and customers want to interact with government online (as AGIMO's latest eGovernment Satisfaction report is telling us) - why are we holding back?
Sunday, June 15, 2008
An intranet isn't an information management system, but it has a role to play | Tweet |
A dilemma we're dealing with in my agency is that many projects have placed their documentation within the intranet and, over time, this has become the authoritative source of the most current copy of some documents.
This means that the owners of the content are very sensitive towards any changes to the intranet's structure which might reduce access to their pages - despite having only small audiences - because if there's an ANAO audit the intranet is the repository of the master documents.
I discourage the use of the intranet in this manner as it does not (in its current version) meet the records management requirements of the National Archives. We don't have appropriate version control, documents cannot be locked, ownership is flexible and archiving, while appropriate for an intranet, isn't up to information management standards.
However our Knowledge Management strategy does features the intranet as a major plank as it is an important tool for storing information, and a primary tool for people to communicate information.
I have seen attempts in the past to co-opt an organisation's intranet and turn it into an information management system. In these cases the intranet was developed according to the standards for digital record keeping.
This worked very well - as an information management tool. However it was lousy at communicating information to staff and lost significant credibility (and usage) - essentially nullifying one of the most important communication tools in the organisation.
The last I heard the organisation has hived off the information management parts and is seeking to regrow a conventional intranet.
I can understand why an organisation might attempt to turn an intranet into an information management system.
Good intranets are used frequently by the majority of staff, they store records (pages and files) and they are in many cases relatively easy to author and edit.
Whereas many information management systems are developed like old-style terminal systems, use strange processes to collect metadata, require enormous amounts of time to add records and are not very good at making information easy to find - unless you know precisely what you are looking for.
I've used several in the past and their usability, accessibility, design, search tool and general processes did not impress me alongside the intranet content management systems available at the time.
I can only think of one good reason why this difference exists - because information management systems have to meet lots of information storage standards - an intranet system can ignore them and make things easier for authors and users.
So should your intranet be an information management system?
My view is that it shouldn't - it should focus on what intranets do best, communicate information relevant to staff, facilitate collaboration and support staff in performing job-related tasks through being a central gateway / repository of tools and services.
If possible your intranet should also have a social aspect to help build (an appropriate) organisational culture and build staff loyalty and commitment by helping them feel like family - all work and no play makes Jack/Jill look elsewhere for an enjoyable work experience.
However intranets do have their part to play within an information management strategy.
An intranet is one of the mediums in which information is stored, and is a great tool for spreading information to those who need it within an organisation.
It is also a gateway to tools - such as an information management system - and tight integration between the two helps ensure that teams more effectively collaborate and manage their information.
I recommend that organisations consider their intranet as a 'primer' to help their staff get into the practice of information management.
First get enough of your staff using your intranet to create, store and share information through making the intranet easy to access, easier to author and full of appropriate content and tools.
Then once your staff have gotten the hang of putting content and files into an online system, introduce them to the 'real' information management system, which (in an ideal situation) integrates with the intranet and is almost as easy to use.
This way you'll not only ensure that your intranet is doing its job, but that your information management system is as well.
Presentation Zen in Sydney 4 July! | Tweet |
James Robertson from Step Two Designs has organised for Garr Reynolds, presentation guru and writer of the Presentation Zen blog (and now book) to give one public event in Sydney while he's in Australia.
It's not free, but it's well worth investigating: http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/index.html
