Hall of Shame/Fame

Just before the New Year, I had to renew my vehicle registration at the last minute, using a very slow dial-up connection through the Pennsylvania DOT. Having taken a look at the Maryland version, I'm very glad I wasn't trying to use that one!

On the one hand, the lists and labels are all perfectly clear (if they happen to cover what you're looking for); no fancy words or labels. But, as more than one person has pointed out, there are simply too many of them, and it's visually overwhelming. In addition, options appear twice - you could choose 'Registration Renewal' under 'online transactions' or 'vehicle services'. The two categories are reasonable enough - but having multiple links to the same place from the same page is less useful.

And, in the meantime, this would be a nightmare to load on a slow connection. In particular, what on earth is the purpose of that slide-show-ish thing at the top, complete with what look like tape-deck controls? I should think that would be overwhelming to someone not used to the web (or on the dreaded dial-up connection, waiting and waiting and waiting for it to load).

So - it's not efficient, I have doubts about the speed, it's definitely not intuitive. The overall appearance is memorable enough, but since most things you only do once a year or so, you'll have to figure out all over again how to navigate through it all. The basic concept is there, but the presentation itself could definitely stand to be a little more basic.

Jan 6, 2013, 5:06pm, fionajardine wrote:
Re: This website should be shamed! www.mva.maryland.gov


I am in total agreement with you! Having relocated from an area recently, I find the Maryland DMV website to be a nightmare. It was extremely difficult to navigate and there was entirely too much information on the site in a disorganized way. Not to mention anything on the site was easy to find and there was no directory to help with locating the necessary information.

I also found that some of the links were outdated and no longer leading to the appropriate sites. Not to mention there were entirely too many links in the first place.

I believe the abundance of information causes the website to slow down which causes user frustration and the system timing out.

I understand and most DMV sites will have too much information and may be difficult to navigate, but in all the states I have lived I feel Maryland is the worst.

I also felt the map that is supposed to help determine the county in which the individual lives is not helpful. I feel that for a person looking for information relating to the DMV is better off wadding through the telephone system the going to the website.

A suggestion for fixing this website would be to spread out the links and make it "user friendly" instead of cramming too much information in one place. I would also suggest picking a lively and vibrant color scheme to keep the user engaged.

My hall of shame website is www.ted.com, the website that curates videos from the famous “Ted Talks” lecture series. The site’s main purpose is to allow the user to find, select, and stream videos of the archived lectures, and to engage in online discussions about the videos. The audience is the general public, probably educated, as the topics tend to the scientific, technical, economic, or artistic. While the videos themselves are artfully and engagingly presented, the website itself falls short of that standard, and in fact puts up several obstacles to a satisfying user experience:

1. Busy look. The homepage is cluttered with text, with no main focus. Instead of being drawn to any one area, I am tempted to mouse my way around the site, seeing what is to be found below the fold. However when I do, I encounter…

2. Annoying pop-ups. There is some focus on the page, largely determined by the central-right photo montage of thumbnail links to a collection of available videos (these turn out to be the newest releases). But they turn out to have the annoying feature of popping up with an added frame and blurb, distracting the user. And when the user clicks through the image, it is unclear what the result will be: my expectation was that I would get a page of more information on the video with the option to stream. As it turned out, the selected video starts instantly, and with a loud and irritating “swoosh,” before the user has a chance to decide whether to watch the video or not. It should be noted that this kind of behavior, annoying as it is, is also exhibited on Youtube, but not, for instance, on Vimeo.

3. Low contrast text. The masthead text is mostly light gray on a white background, making it particularly hard to read because of the low contrast.

4. Small text. To add the clutter and further diminishing the readability, most of the text is small.


The site does get a few things right.
5. Logo and mission statement are clear, simple, and inspiring. The logo “Ted” is boldly and simply expressed in the upper left hand corner, in large bright red letters, next to the site’s pithily expressed motto, “Ideas worth spreading” (although this is in low contrast gray lettering). Below a bright red horizontal line, the mission is clearly and inspiringly presented in an economical form: “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.”

6. Limited length. The homepage is mostly “above the fold,” making it possible to view almost everything needed on one page (at least if this middle-aged set of eyes has to squint to see it).

7. Thumbnails sizes correlate with tag match; images effectively convey available content. The thumbnails in the photo montage are resized to how well they match the keywords on the left hand side, making for an engaging way of browsing through the curated videos. And since the main purpose of the site is to stream videos, using thumbnail images rather than text to showcase available content is effective and inviting.

Overall Assessment/Nomination Rationale
While I value the lectures themselves, getting to them requires navigating on the home page through a jumble of hard to read text, annoying pop-up images, and videos that start before I’ve decided to watch them. On the other hand, I do recognize that provocative tags (“jaw dropping,” “funny,” “beautiful,”) and clever resized-by-tag-matching thumbnails help make to searching serendipitous. Because the navigation though the site is so flawed, I nominate the site for my hall of shame.

Re duckduckgo.com/,

I completely agree, I think this is a great site- fast, "memorable" as you say, no clutter. They are consciously trying to out-Google Google- to build on the example of Google in the early days without making the same mistakes, for instance, especially regarding privacy issues. But of course, Google is a big business and makes a lot of money selling ads. It remains to be seen whether DuckDuckGo can stay in business competitive without having some kind of revenue stream. But for now, it's providing a very enjoyable web experience.
Fred