New Car Magazine Website Review
Car Magazine, is arguably the worlds finest publication for automotive enthusiasts. For decades they have been an institution and a standard bearer in terms of journalistic quality, photographic excellence and exquisite packaging. For many years whatever Car Magazine did with their publication, other magazine and journals followed. However while being an icon in the print world, Car Magazine were incredibly slow to embrace the online medium.
This changed about 18 months ago when they launched their first venture online. While the journalistic quality was very good and images by in large excellent, the design of the site was disappointing. It was not a bad website but not in keeping with the quality of design in the printed article. As I have stated before, integrating off line and online is the name of the game. Harrods do an excellent with their website, so I was glad to see yesterday that Car Magazine have spruced up their website. Read More
Posted 17.12.07New BBC Homepage Review
I am a big fan of the BBC website. In terms of content it is probably one of the finest websites on the net and it is my own preferred choice for news and sport. The existing website is pretty well laid out but you can tell that it was clearly not designed for the brash banner advertisements which have appeared on it in the last month. So when I visited the homepage this morning, I was very pleased to see that they were offering a new customisable homepage.
A customisable homepage, is not a new thing. Yahoo have offered this service for a very long time, while Google are also in on, along with specialist sites such as pageflakes. So what is it that BBC can bring to the market? Well thats a good question but for the moment I’m going to focus on the design of the website as I reckon it will offer a good insight into the future design of the BBC Website.
The first thing that strikes me about this page is the colour. Gone is the defacto light blue we have seen for years and in is a tasteful purple gradient. Gradients feature big on this website, with various shades of white to dark grey making an appearance. This page owes a lot to the new Apple Website but in my opinion it has been better executed.
The labeling on this site is excellent. This is due to the correct use of headers and appropriate font-weights and spacings. As like all BBC websites content is king so the photographs used are sharp and well cropped to fit in. The content is of course excellent, but what I like about this page over the normal homepage is that there is space for it to breath. The existing website suffers from content overload while the new homepage gives a larger screen resolution and cuts down on the links to give the content more space. Colour coding for certain major sections such as “World Service” makes reading so much easier that you wonder why they didn’t use it again in the footer. The footer is the weakest section of the page but it is well aligned and labeled and far easier to read than many other websites I have reviewed.
Customising news sources to the readers choice is a clever way of cutting down on irrelevant information but risky for the BBC to implement. One of my favourite features of the existing website is the “Most Emailed” or “Most Read” Top 5. This is a feature which has to to be added. The danger is that by ommitting the social aspect of news, people will tend to live in their own bubble with a resulting drop in page views. New sources should be diverse and far reaching. If I limited news sources to only my interests I wouldn’t hear or read much so BBC have to be careful. Publicly funded organisations like the BBC need page views to justify budgets. If pageviews drop, content is cut and that affects we the audience.
Overall I’m impressed that the BBC implemented a personal homepage. It is not as intelligent as Pageflakes, or as far reaching as iGoogle which has email and widgets, but it is better laid out and far more pleasing on the eye. I particularly like that there is no advertisements on it but here lies my worry. Facebook, Google and Yahoo make a fortune out of matching advertisements to their audience’s interests. Are BBC trying to present their content better or are they just trying to get to know us better?
Is Auntie Beeb looking out for us or she just trying to become Big Brother?
Posted 15.12.07There is No Environmental Free Lunch
I find myself talking about the environment with people more often these days. The destruction of our environment is probably going to be the main issue over the next decades so it is good that people have opinions on these things. Opinions are important, because apathy is rarely a positive force, while conflict at least breeds action.
I confess that I’m not an expert on environmental issues, but I’m an analytical guy and I’m not averse to doing a bit of research. I’m also a car guy so that is going to the focus of this blog.
London dwellers and Irish people will be familiar with the breaks that government’s give to hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius. In London, giant Lexus are exempt from the congestion charge if they sport the hybrid badge on their rear. In Ireland, Hybrids benefit from tax breaks for their supposed green credentials. In Ireland our Minister for the Environment has decided that he wants car tax based on CO2 emissions and wants our vehicle fleet replaced by less polluting vehicles, with Hybrids being extolled for their supposed green credentials.
All these initatives miss the point of pollution and show quite some ignorance regarding vehicle production. The overall environmental impact of a hybrid car is greater than a similar diesel car. This is because the complexity of manufacturer and the replacement of battery packs emits more Carbon Dioxide than the fuel savings garnered from the electric motor.
If all the cars in Ireland are hybrids will that make the environment better? No it won’t. We’d lower our annual CO2 emmissions in Ireland, but whats the point? Like it or not we are a planet and we’re in it together. What we save in Ireland will be spent by Japan or wherever the vehicles are made. Thinking locally just doesn’t cut it.
Even though I’m an avid car guy, I do think people change their vehicles too often. I often wonder at what point should we change cars? Car technology advances relatively slowly so the question is: How long should we hold a car for? A new car has to replace the old one so will the better fuel efficiency make up for the manufacturing costs over 1, 2, 5 or 20 years? Until these questions are answered any initiatives to get people to change cars for environmental reasons are short sighted and poorly judged. Also recommending hybrids over less complex but more efficient diesel engines, is incompetent.
Good luck to those in Bali. We need action for sure, but we need practical research. The public and most certainly our government’s need practical measures to reduce global emissions. For all the diplomats on expense accounts out there: please remember there really is no free lunch.
Posted 12.12.07About.com Showing Graphic Images on its Website
I received in my inbox yesterday an email forward regarding a grizzly bear. The email contained a powerpoint presentation of the story of a hunter who had killed the supposed largest grizzly bear in the world. The email contained amongst several images, one particularly gruesome image which was quite awful and which I will not link to.
I decided to Google “Giant Grizzly” in order to find out if it was all one big hoax, in the hope that it was. The first result on the list was a page on About.com’s own directory of urban legends. The About.com page regarding this email forward actually contained the same graphic image that I was so apalled by. About.com did place a warning above the image warning viewers it was a graphic and it was not suitable for people of a sensitive disposition.
The trouble with About.com’s warning was that it was on a page designed for 800*600 resolution and the warning was “above the fold” for that resolution. On my 1920*1200 resolution screen the image was dead centre, meaning that their warning was completely useless, and that the majority of users using (1024*768 or 1280*1024) would have seen some part of the image whether they wanted to or not.
This is not a post about email forwards, because these things will happen. This is about a large corporation hosting images which are quite frankly sick and gruesome and also failing to protect users. Just imagining what effect this image would have on a 7 year old child is quite upsetting. If About.com insist on hosting this image at the very least have a blur filter on it until it is clicked and give people the chance to bypass the page. Just guessing people’s screen resolution and putting it below the fold is not good enough. This is lazy web programming and poor customer relations.
Update your Website! (before you get sued)
Posted 06.12.07The Functional Path of Website Design
I can’t say that I often get asked what is the methodology that I use to make a website, however I do get asked “what is the best way to make a website?”. The answer I give is that each website is unique and what works on one won’t necessarily work on another. However I do have certain “website values” that I try to adhere to across all the websites that I work on.
The best methodology I can find is not from management science or project management or even from art. My principles of Web Design are derived from coaching. In particular I’m a fan of Vern Gambetta. Vern is a very experienced coach with rare expertise across a lot of sports, from athletics to baseball to volleyball. Vern has coached for over 35 years and publicly states that he is continually learning how to coach as well as possible. Vern’s way of coaching is called “the Functional Path”.
The “functional path” is described as follows:
“The Functional Path is a path that had been traveled many times before but had fallen out of use in favor of smoother paved roads that promised faster and easier results. Seeking to follow and better define the functional path is a continuing journey, fortunately it is a journey that many have traveled before. Functional Path training is getting back to the basics of movement”
What this means is that Vern focuses on training programs which add value to the individual or team that he is coaching. Often this translates to hard work using the bare minimum of gadgets. A practical example of this is that Vern favours free weights over the newest bit of constricting gym equipment. What is most functional and adds most value is best.
With web design this can translate to the less sexy product and hard work. It is quite easy to get a website that looks well by using a load of Flash. The client might be happy with the way it looks but if the website adds no value to client’s business than its just a waste of time and money. If Vern gets a basketball team pumped up doing bodybuiliding, they might be happy with the way they look but if they are slower and not shooting well then there is no point.
Having worked on websites for 7 years my interest is in adding value to the client. Each website is different in the same way as each individual is different but the basics are nearly always the same.
Atrier is dedicated to pursuing the functional path of website design.
Posted 05.12.07Accenture - Update your Website
Today’s website that is up for evaluation is that of Accenture. Accenture are one of the largest consultancies in the world and have operations all around the world. Their logo is respected as being one of the best modern corporate identities and by in large they have quite a positive media profile. However, for all their prowess Accenture have dropped the ball on their homepage.
In comparison to most corporate websites, Accenture’s homepage is concise and short. Now while this may appear positive, it is not. Their is no point being short if means you lose context. In the case of the Accenture website, this short homepage is a very poor road map of the corporate website. In some ways it is more reminiscent of a late 90’s splash screen than the shop front of one a large consultancy.
Navigation on this website, is a dog’s breakfast of poor accessibility. The upper left hand side of the screen is screaming for some text links, but text is relegated to a few sundry items at the bottom of the screen. What we have instead is Flash, and lots of it. The primary navigation is not only Flash but DHTML-style dropdown Flash menus. Have these people not heard of accessibility? Frankly I am appalled that a company with no shortage of resources should choose to create a website that shuns the visually impaired. It is not good enough. You might forgive Accenture if they couldn’t afford or if it was beautifully done, but it is neither. Change it!
Give the lack of quality navigation the search box is given quite an amount of prominence, being displayed in isolation at the top of the screen. I reckon it gets used a lot.
This page doesn’t really have much to redeem it. The site is based around an uninspiring and quite poor picture of Tiger Woods. In the way they use Tiger we are meant to presume that Accenture associate them with excellence on a par of Mr. Wood’s golf talent. But why use that image? Why use an image of Tiger seemingly swallowing a wasp rather than with him powerfully striking the ball into the distance. Such an image would convey an ability to deliver on ones’ goals and that of an agile, successful enterprise. instead we get the mental picture of some old guys sitting around, not able to see what the objective is and looking thoroughly miserable.
If I were a prospective client and I wanted a web project to be delivered I would not have any faith in Accenture based on this embarrassing performance.
Accenture you say you know what it takes to be a tiger, how about you actually deliver like Tiger Woods and create the best website you can. Otherwise you might be like the other tiger - on the verge of extinction.
Posted 26.11.07Progress: from the Group to the Individual
As part of Science Week Ireland, Bloggers have been asked to write on a number of subjects. I chose to write on “What invention do you want to see most in the future?” as it is a question I have been asking myself over the last year.
Stephen Fry once said that the greatest time to live is now. This moment in time is the peak of human existence. He said that if we choose to we can live in whatever era we want be it Medieval times, the Victorian era or merely living in a 1970s bubble. However I disagree with Stephen to a degree. While technologically progress may appear to have moved on, in some respects we as a human race lack capabilities that we had back in the 1960s or 1970s.
The most poignant example of this is Concorde. Concorde had a top speed of 1350mph. When it was retired the fastest commercial airline was the Boeing 747, itself a fellow 1960s design. It is capable of 605mph, less than half of what Concorde could do. Where else in human achievement have we gone backwards over the course of four decades? Concorde was not merely an aircraft but a symbol of man-kinds abilities to shrink space and time with technological progress. As Jeremy Clarkson noted when exiting Concorde on its ultimate voyage, “This is one small step for a man, but one huge leap backwards for mankind”.
When people discuss public apathy towards science, they often forget that the sense of adventure and epic scale of the 1950s and 1960s has been lost. We may all have sophisticated mobile phones in our pockets but even now we are 10 years from putting a man on the moon. It wasn’t an easy task back in the 70s but NASA were capable of it at a months notice. The past 3 decades has seen a switch in technological progress from the group to the individual. Mankind’s loss has been man’s gain. Personal computing, mobile phones and personal music players have been the areas that have seen the most innovation. It is no wonder our sense of romance with science has been lost when the summit of mankind’s technological ability is in the grubby pocket of the guy next to you on the bus.
What I want to see is a return to grand scale projects born not out of economic rationality but as a demonstration of what the human mind can conceive. I want to see Supersonic travel for all, I want inter-continental trains and I want giant airships where at present we have giant ships. Most of what I have said is technologically possible in the here and now. For instance the proposed Skycat Airship is a fuel efficient alternative to the heavy unwieldy tankers that circle our oceans. My fathers generation had cigarette cards with the amazing machines of their era. As good as it is to have the new Airbus A380, one would not call it beautiful by any stretch.
In summary: The people of the 1960s had the SR-71 spy plane, we have cell phones, who do you think has the technological oneupmanship? Maybe we should go back to the Future.
Gottfried Helnwein - Website Design Classics
By in large, I like to stay on the beaten track with website design reviews. I usually pick big corporates that should know better or who have the funds to produce something of high quality. However today’s review focuses on the power of one. The website up for review is that of the extraordinary artist Gottfried Helnwein. Helnwein was born in Vienna but has both Austrian and Irish citizenship, and resides in Tipperary for half of the year. His art is in one word: incredible. I’m not an art critic and I am do not possess the skills to convey the quality of this man’s work so visit the website and judge for yourself.
In my review of the McDonald’s corporate website I hit out at the fact that the corporate homepage was of very poor quality with blurred images, crappy Flash animation and lacked quality standards or coherence. Contrast this to the website of Gottfried Helnwein. This is the website of 1 man yet offers content in multiple languages and across multiple domains and the interface remains crisp, clean and intuitive.
What I like most about this is that it is an artist’s website that is easy to use, clearly presented and provides decent accessibility. Most artistic websites are full of either convoluted Flash or JavaScript. Artists forget that the work should speak for itself and not be tarted up by web trickery. Helnwein is obviously confident in his work judging by the way it is presented. His art is displayed as images plain and simple. However it should be noted that the images used are all of high quality and quite some effort has gone into presenting them in a way that is suitable for the web. There are no amateur scars of photographic over exposure or drop shadow to detract from the pieces themselves. If you are in any doubt to the quality of the work look at the image on the homepage and ask yourself how would you create that with oil and acrylic paint!
The primary navigation is immediately available at the top of the page with deeper navigation at the bottom of the page. The drop-down list at the top adds braces to the navigation belt by providing the same functionality as the deeper navigation but in the header area. By in large drop-down lists are not ideal for navigation, but if they are a back-up to traditional text or images they can work well. This is one of the finest examples of such navigation that I have found, mainly due to the well spaced writing and colour-coding.
By all accounts Helnwein is comfortable in the web setting. While his art is known for its shocking and often controversial visuals, he ironically displays the work in a way that adheres to web standards and here-in lies the key. Art should break standards and websites should adhere to standards. Helnwein excels at this whereas as most artists are happy to peddle conventional art on websites that break standards.
Gottfried we salute you.
Posted 13.11.07Microsoft Doesn’t Matter
One of the best bits of advice I ever is that “you can see the Bubble bulge before it bursts if you look around you”. The crux of this is that you pay close attention to what is happening you can foresee a collapse. The most famous example of this is probably that of the investor selling his entire portfolio prior to the great depression when he discovers his shoe shine boy giving him stock tips . Similarly, when people talk about buying property like they do about sports results you know the fall is coming. So for this article, I’m going to draw on my own experience in relation to Microsoft - still the largest software company in the world in terms of Market Capitalisation.
I’ve already stated that Google own much of what I do online. I love their products because they are effective, reliable and free. I’m not an open source guru, I’ve only used Linux once but I’ve recently come to realise I don’t use any Microsoft products on a regular basis. MS Office (which is by far their best product) is way down on my “to buy list”. I’ve tried Office 2007 and don’t really think it is anything special. I now use NeoOffice or Google Docs on the vastly superior OS X instead. None of their current products entice me enough to buy. Windows is buggy and a virus threat, IE is no Firefox despite the improvements and the XBox 360 just doesn’t tempt me. Read More
Posted 07.11.07Satisficing and the Web
Satisficing is a word made from the words satisfying and suffice. It is a verb meaning to choose something that is satisfactory but not the ideal. The term was first coined by Herbert Simon in the mid 1950’s. Simon wrote that humans find it very hard to make the ideal decision because of our “limited cognitive abilities” i.e. we have small brains and there are too many variables for our minds to evaluate to choose the optimal alternative. As a result we satisfice and pick the best of the information that we can process. Read More
Posted 06.11.07