Manchester City Council
manchester.gov.uk
manchester.gov.uk
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well done folks.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 :(
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 not a designer either, but I know that what you seem to call a "slider" is a "carousel".
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.
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.
If I go to a .gov.uk site it's because a need a specific piece of information, I don't need the design getting in the way.
I see you're new here. "I agree" is a contentless response that adds nothing to the topic at hand. Feel free to post if you have something interesting to say, but "+1" is discouraged here.
Sadly, most UK government sites are both ugly and horrible to navigate. Or at least that was the trend until recently, thankfully it seems some of those organisations are starting to re-fit their site.
And the look of the manchester one of more balenced, whereas the gateshead one is nice and clean, but doesn't have any beauty about it.
For example, rollover states are either missing, inverting to hard to read colors, or... weird. Who designs buttons without designing and testing rollover states?
But then again Gateshead is near Newcastle so its hard to argue...
This is where the council paid to erect a London Eye replica in the middle of the bloody town; a city quite proud of featuring the tallest and ugliest hotel in the land, and where the main attractions are a stadium and one of the largest shopping centre in Europe (certainly the tackiest -- think Las Vegas' Bellagio, triple the size, add "paintings" of Wayne Rooney and Winston Churchill). Mancunians are a lovely bunch, but damn don't they half-like being in-your-face.
...it's amazing how many people totally miss the point of sliders/carousels/slideshows: to sell profitable products or showcase important site content! if you use them, put them at the page top and have relevant captions with links that people actually click.
https://www.gov.uk/running-a-limited-company/taking-money-ou...
That is brilliant, thank you very much for this.
Yes, that means people using older browsers/machines, users with restricted vision, anyone that requires access to a council website, or requires information about council services. On IE7, this website works, but it takes a very long time to load, probably because the home page is 1MB, with just under 950k of this being images, and this isn't acceptable. The average user couldn't care less if the site looks nice, or is aesthetically pleasing, or if they are using a browser that StatCounter claim is at 1% worldwide. They want their information.
I picked up a council project a few years ago, where an agency had built a nice looking website. However, it had not been tested using screen readers or tested using a focus group. After a few months they had received complaints about users using screen readers not being able to read the pages regarding council services for visually-impaired people.
A good designer will create the bare minimum for a functional site, and a good developer will use the best tools for the job, instead of the tools that everyone else uses.
Without the context this submission makes no sense at all.
The best word I have for it is that it feels paternalistic. I think there are many occasions where HN commenters write dumb things and reflect on themselves poorly. And in many cases, the original title of the linked page is fine. But people writing blog posts (or just titling demo pages or other sites, like the one linked here) aren't writing their titles with the intent that their title will give context to the readers of a random forum. It's bizarre that HN mods change the titles, and I really wish they would stop.
I've seen projects that haven't cost more than a few hundred dollars and still look absolutely stunning. I've also seen projects developed this year that look like they have been dragged from the 90s, yet cost millions in today's money.
So spending money on good design can definitely be worth it. Assuming every penny spent on aesthetics is a penny wasted is a developer fallacy.
I hear the same arguments about developer sites (eg PHP manual) but frankly I prefer layouts with an emphasis on conveying content rather than watering down that content behind a wall of epic sized fonts, fading effects and huge scrollable areas.
There's a time and place for each design choice, but government sites aren't there to look pretty, they're there for reference. And while it's entirely possible to have a such a layout that isn't ugly, in this instance I think the site has gone the other way (form over function) - so I'd sooner see be faced with an ugly site.
NB this is coming from a dyslexic who equally hates being presented with walls of text.
But minimal websites doesn't have to be ugly of course.
Usability should be the most important factor of a government website. If it can be pretty and usable, then that's a bonus.
To people like me and you it means "stupid things that prevent me from doing what I want. Things that are only there because someone thinks they look nice"
To good designers it means "very carefully made choices that make information easier to find; that make websites easier to use; and that have the added benefit of making things less ugly."
I say that a book is often a great example of minimal design. Designers point out that books have hundreds of years of cumulative design - the fonts have been iterated; the layout and the margins and the indents and everything has all had decades of iteration.
I get the feeling that you and parent both agree and are now talking past each other.
Since The other guy counter-argued using those same terms so I can only assume that our opinions differ.
Websites should maximize user experience, i.e. how pleasantly the user feels. Aesthetics and usability contribute to that.
Many of the design principles that improve the aesthetics of a site do have a direct correlation in making those sites easier to navigate and use, esp. for folks who already have a hard time navigating web pages or understanding what information is good/bad/desired. This goes for quality and design of icon sets, font selection, color palette, hinting effects for interactive page elements link links, navigation hierarchy, and more.
> There's a time and place for each design choice, but government sites aren't there to look pretty, they're there for reference. And while it's entirely possible to have a such a layout that isn't ugly, in this instance I think the site has gone the other way (form over function) - so I'd sooner see be faced with an ugly site.
It is true some sites go overboard with visual emphasis will not fully considering user experience. That is true for aesthetically pleasing and unpleasing sites. Government sites are no different from any other kind of site - if aesthetic improvements make the UX better, they are appropriate, perhaps even more so for a site that is supposed to be totally accessible to all people affected by government.
I beg to differ. I think government sites (as well as other reference material like programming manuals) are about getting visitors to their requested information as quickly and painlessly as possible. The user experience isn't from browsing the site, it's purely on whether the visitor found the piece of information or not. Where as recreational sites are about keeping visitors on the page for longer. ie encouraging them to browse around on related pages and re-visit the site again - preferably frequently. For that to work, having a prettier site is of more importance (note that I'm not saying more important than usability, just that aesthetics is of more importance on those types of sites than on reference sites).
It's like sports cars vs delivery trucks. The former needs to be prettier as it's a luxury item and few people would buy an ugly luxury item. So sometimes you'll see the design dictated a little by aesthetics (eg the way the doors open). The latter is bought to serve a specific purpose, so if it's not functional then people wouldn't buy it. This means that delivery trucks generally aren't as aesthetically pleasing but they don't need to be.
To expand on my example, when you described how form and function work beautifully together is a little like Eddie Stobart trucks, they've laid the function down first and then worked out how to make it feel a great deal more special by emphasising the functional attributes of the truck. And as much as I agree with you that examples like that in web design is fantastic, it's a very hard thing to judge. Sadly most people don't pull it off.
Not only is the landing page excellent, but most websites can't figure out layout beyond the landing page. Check out an article page:
https://www.gov.uk/being-taken-to-employment-tribunal-by-emp...
Simply elegant.
Edit - The landing page could look less like a sea of links if they put a simple 16x16 glyph icon next to each link that represents it.
A page full of black text on a white background? Sounds like you're on some kind of ideological trip.
> If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead.
I view it as similar to Wikipedia's "no original research" policy.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Edit: Well that was a quick downvote. Guess the Boston bombing strikes a nerve. But is it so hard to be objective about it?
Try finding, for example, the cost of a planning application. It's a few clicks away from the home page, which is fine given that it's reasonably logical if you can spot the initial starting point on the homepage ... but the search is poor. For the terms "cost of planning", a link to http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/200074/planning/5865/plann... is hidden at the 6th result in a page of links that's essentially a wall of text. Search results are likely to be a very important part of a large data driven site, so they should be much better.
Those icons are confusing. Click expand to see the whole list together. What a mess! Ideally they should be using glyphs with much bolder lines, or if they're really set on using the current ones, place each on a solid white circle. Right now they blend in with the text and seem to add to the overall visual noise.
Scrolling down the page, why the hell am I looking at a gigantic picture of a girl staring back at me? That image would be better placed on an interior decorating portfolio, not a city council website. Ideally the images shouldn't be so large and vague, but if they're set on using it, they should've overlayed the image with its headline in a large white font (currently relegated to the invisible location of below the image)
I have issues with their color scheme too. I think most governmental websites should use white as their dominant color, for clarity's sake. GOV.UK is a website that is worth aspiring towards, not this. Very much not this.
I always prefer iconic interfaces as compared to the ones with just text. Try to think of one thing that you would like to find and go to gov.uk and then to manchester.gov.uk. See which one is easier to find
Icons vs Labels vs Both: http://edwardsanchez.me/blog/13589712
I would hold GOV.UK as a site that's too minimalist. A person could be forgiven for thinking the gov.uk domain is still up for sale.
I would imagine that the sharing of the data collected on government websites with 3rd parties be rather strictly regulated. Especially when it's collected as a part of a tracking infrastructure that spans beyond said sites.
Good design involves a lot more than eye candy.
By comparison, the manchester site is dead simple, and search is at the top corner where it should be. That style of design reduces content areas (with a corresponding boost to element/object/image size, since there's less stuff competing for the space). Call it eye candy, but it's a lot easier to use for people who aren't used to visually parsing complex page designs.
My problem with the manchester site is the poor use of vertical space, and some of the icon choices, not the basic design style.
I don't know if you understand Dutch but since text is part of the interface maybe this is why you are having issues with the design?
"My problem with the manchester site is the poor use of vertical space, not the basic design style." Well I was talking about exactly this. The Manchester site may look nice but it is lacking overview. Design is more than looks. It is also about text, interaction and so on.
I use google chrome which translates the page well enough for me to understand.
There are too many visually distinct sections on those Dutch websites for someone who isn't familiar with the site to find anything quickly. There are non-tech-savvy folks for whom anything more complex than the manchester site, or Google's front page search box, is too complex for them to deal with. They wouldn't be able to visually scan the Dutch pages for what they want. Whether it's lack of technical familiarity, lack of attention span, or something else, I don't know. Lots of text divided up into arbitrary sections simply doesn't work well for them.
How is the manchester site lacking an overview? It has four major categories near the top, another tier of categories which expands into 20 categories with one click, and if that doesn't find what you're looking for, or you're lazy, you can type what you want into the conveniently located search box.
I agree that the manchester site be improved (most of the stuff at the bottom should be eliminated or turned into links in the top bar), but I think it's closer to ideal than the two sites you linked are.
"I'm about to enter a boring website that makes getting to a point super challenging unless you read tons of word documents."
On entering manchester.gov.uk
"Oh look at this! They did a recent update to their design. It feels fresh and trendy. Maybe they actually care. Maybe they were able to update their information architecture as well! There is hope that I won't have to spend an hour reading a bunch of text."
The majority of government websites are very apathetic and poorly implemented. I am very happy to see that this is starting to change!
http://www.designweek.co.uk/analysis/govuk-goes-worldwide/30...
It appears there are many UK city sites that are trying to implement these principles. Given that the principles include accessibility guidelines [0] and transparency of intent [1], I'd prefer to see more city sites designed this way. (That is if the sites in question faithfully implement the design principles)
Regarding the site OP linked, even if a little glossy, it's certainly not a disaster of usability. In fact, I tend to believe in the aesthetic-usability effect [2] in the case of not-so-design-savvy users, the added sheen might actually motivate them to use the city portal more often.
[0]https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples#sixth [1]https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples#tenth [2]http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/emotion_design_at.html
One improvement would be an auto-complete feature on the main search box, but I think I'm in a pretty small minority that would benefit from that.
This one gets you to (what they believe to be) the most-commonly requested issues instantly, and gives you a quick idea of what you can find in each section. This is the perfect place for search results suggestions too. Remember, most visitors to these sites are not going to be frequent users - they won't have the time or inclination to learn a more complex system.
I don't think it's perfect, but I think it's a great idea that just needs a bit of extra polish.
The #1 priority of government websites should be accessibility, not looking cool with whatever garbage unusable web trends are popular du jour and supported by only a handful of desktop browsers running on modern hardware.
You right now.
242 points means that the Design is a success. So stop being a dick, you're not better than anyone for pointing failures that doesn't exist.
If you really want to critique Design work, at least make sure you understand everything said here: http://ia.net/blog/learning-to-see/
No, 242 points means that the design critique is a successful conversation engager. I upvoted to give "government sites should give function more importance than form" more visibility.
As for the site, I can't see how the navigation would have me pulling out any fewer hairs than any other government site, but it is very large, multicolored and slidey, so if I were putting together an iPad commercial I might use it in a couple of shots.
That's not how most government sites are structured in my experience, though I'm not from the UK.
I am still clicking around... can anyone find it, I wonder?
Plus, you can find it very easily by putting "council tax band" into the search box.
Here's a particularly unhelpful FAQ, which says the data is "displayed on our web pages" http://www.manchester.gov.uk/faqs/faq/19013/what_can_i_do_if...
What I find bad about that - is that I know my way around a website, and I couldn't find the required information. I found it with ease on other council website suggested in the comments (Lambeth, Gateshead, Birmingham: all 2-3 links deep)
If we want people to look for information on the web rather than blocking council call centres: this website is not the right way.
However, what I'd have really liked to see is machine readable minutes of the council.
This is something that's a bit of a bug bear having ended up setting up a project awhile back to try and bring-out the minutes etc of the council meetings. We called it MCC Work For You: https://code.google.com/p/mcc-work-for-you/ Sadly within the confines of a hackday we couldn't get as much progress as we'd have liked. However, as a proof of concept it was useful, and did inspire @CountCulture to go forward with his site: http://openlylocal.com/
I'd really like to see progress in this area, and the encouragement of councils to make progress with making the minutes readable. Definitely helpful for investigative journalists, as well exposing the good work of councillors.
I wonder if there's a plan somewhere for this? I couldn't find it on the site.....
The Manchester city page is certainly better than a number of government sites I've seen in the past, (kudos) but might benefit from a bit better economy of screen real estate.
This is a modern government website design I like better: http://www.kk.dk
Form always follows function when it comes to design, and when it comes to government, function requires that the site is as accessible as possible.
Color selection, JavaScript use, and extended backwards compatibility with older browsers are among the the many considerations one has to take into account for the elderly, the impaired, and those who simply don't have access to modern browsers. That being said, it's definitely possible to have stunning design with these things taken into account, we just can't implement every bell and whistle we're used to.
Lame. Put your money where your mouth is. It wouldn't take much work to find out just which State department has got Deloitte in.
It's important to have good machines for development. But I wonder how many people have terrible machines for testing.
As for local government: Here's an example. Gloucestershire (http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/resident) - imagine you want to report a child at risk. The search gives you useful results, but also sends you to the Safeguarding children website. (http://www.gscb.org.uk/)
The Gloucestershire site is good[1] and the GSCB site is terrible.
[1] for some values of good, including 'you should have seen it a few years ago'.
When I go to a service, for example "Roads, parking & transport" and I go to the bottom of the page there is a section called "Policies, statements & resources". Now I need to click it in order to see the items, why not have it in this state by default? I've checked some of the other pages and there never really are a lot of links underneath there anyway, so this won't make the pages a lot longer.
A government site has a job to do, primarily to provide information and contact details, this is more suited to someone peddling organic food.
Gov't sites should maybe be the opposite of this: as little art as possible and squeaky clean navigation getting you to your desired municipal information as possible so you can do what you came to do then get on with your day.
Anything else is _distracting_.
The designer and developers behind this are talented, of course, and to sell a redesign often involves these sort of hero shots and contemporary flourishes. But a bigger accomplishment would have been to pitch and win a design that is minimally invasive and efficient.
I'm betting yes, and the cost saved (in terms of time, frustration and maybe money) over a poorly designed yet inexpensive-looking site will be worthwhile.
Side note: Would love to see a blog post about the thought behind the design, either from the design agency or the web manager at Manchester...
When I need information related to goverment services, first thing where I look are search engines.
FWIW, http://www.jadu.net are the agency who made the Manchester site.
The red flag, workers holding their tools, ready to fight. Did Manchester become the Soviet Republic of Manchester?
http://img0083.popscreencdn.com/101036667_amazoncom-chinese-...
Most youth will only be vaguely aware of the origins of that style of imagery.
It is a bit weird, now that I think about it. It's a bit like Korean bars being "Hitler themed".
It would have been a lot more weird if they were showcasing actual Manchester City Council workers.
EDIT: Here's a great book about soviet political posters. I won an award at school, and I chose this book. It was handed to me by, I think, Baroness Warnock. I can't remember what she said, but it was kind and funny.
(http://www.amazon.com/The-Soviet-Political-Poster-1917-1980/...)
However, as its clearly based on an image of the Soviet people then I don't associate anything negative or inappropriate with it. After all, a lot of people in the UK still remember that it was mainly the Soviets who defeated the Nazis - resulting in incredible suffering and hardship for the people there.
[1] http://www.manchester.gov.uk/images/75583_Apprenticeships_ba...
Government sites by default need to cater for every edge case in terms of accessibility, and so functional takes precedence over pretty every time.
My http://glasgow.gov.uk isn't any better
The best I could do involved clicking through to find a local library and then an alphabetical list that forces you to click through on each letter.
[1]: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...
I don't know the rules in the UK, but shouldn't the site work without JavaScript enabled (For the visually impaired)?