Why are governmental sites so overwhelming?
We have a big problem when it comes to governmental websites; whether it’s the web of the City Hall of Chicago, the City Hall of Berlin or the City Hall of Madrid.
A lot has been done to improve the overall look and feel of this type of websites, but still they all seem to have a similar problem: they are overwhelming.
Have you ever had the experience of being browsing around a website, trying to find something that should be really easy to access to, but appearing impossible?
Like Susan Weinschenk and Dean Barker determined, a good interface will allow the user to perceive that they are in control and will allow appropriate control. If you feel like you’re lost in the depth of the web, it will usually mean that the structure of the site is not well planned.
It happens a lot in this type of governmental websites. They are old sites, with really complicated internal structures and lots of information. The main problem is, that even with renewed looks, they have inherited outdated arrangements: the heavy architecture of old websites and the unbearable amount of information collected throughout the years (…and wrongly distributed).
They want to give the users so many options and information, that they end up ruining its usability. Hick’s law says that increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically. And it is outrageous the crazy amount of time users need to spend on this pages to find the information they seek.
Sometimes it seems overwhelming starting anew and trying to design from scratch; but usually on the long term it is the better option. Doing changes on something that already exists can be tricky. You might think it is easier in the beginning; but the chances are high you are going to get stuck, fixing formal and aesthetic aspects and ending up forgetting about the structure. The big work on this sites resides normally in the architecture. Following diverse criteria, things have been moved around a lot throughout the years; to achieve aesthetic goals and welcome new content. During this process of cutting here and pasting there, the structure of the site ended up losing its sense.
After all the superficial changes, the page might look almost okay; but when being used, it feels like chaos. Instead of handing information over, the site is aggressively throwing random, irrelevant content at you. The consequence of working fast and not really focusing on the data, leaves a webpage with redundant information and confusing setups.
I started thinking about the website of my own City Hall, Madrid. It has been improved a lot over the years. But as mentioned above, the changes feel mostly superficial. I am not trying to redesign the site (With the little time I have, I wouldn’t be able even if I wanted to); I intend on pointing out some of the issues that stand out the most to me.
Giving the web a first look and doing a fast analysis, I already feel like there is so much information. This is bad, because we don’t want to saturate the viewer. Another thing I’m not sure about, is the way information is distributed. Also, some titles seem long and not accurate to me. I don’t quite understand the position of the logos of Madrid Central and Plan A. Furthermore, there is a section for popular links on each page, located weirdly right underneath the menu bar, that almost looks like the breadcrumbs of the site. The header-images look heavy and dated. Some sections have background images that seem distracting… The page looks overall pretty inconsistent.
If we take a look into Jakob Nielsen’s usability heuristics, we get a good picture of good criteria to follow while designing. The overall goal of this principles is, to reduce the user’s frustration while handling our systems.
One of the main problems I see throughout the site, is the lack in consistency. Sections that work differently, pages with very different looks… Following Nielsen’s heuristics of consistency and standards: users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing.
Having all these thoughts in mind, I took notes and made sketches on the website, looking for things that made no sense or could be redundant and superfluous.
I tried to think about important aspects that were missing or lost in the midst of chaotic information.
As I said before, this is just a quick approach. But I wanted to see how I could make some small changes. I was curious to see how I could improve the site.
First thing I think should be done, is simplifying content. At some point someone should be hired to do so. Content should be revised and modified; adding the important information that is missing and mostly, getting rid of unnecessary and redundant text that is overflodding the site.
There are certain criteria of the Weinschenk and Barker classification that I think could improve the flow of the interface substantially. In the small arrangements I want to execute, I want the interface to communicate as efficiently as possible, having an attractive and appropriate design; and presenting elements simply.
The problem of this kind of pages is, that there is already too much information; and usually a lot of it is technical and difficult to digest. So we don’t want to add more noise to that already saturated environment. We should aim at simplifying the site to its minimum expression. If we have to add text, we should try to generate clear, concise and relevant messages. If we want to add images they need to be meaningful. All the rest should be dismissed.
Like Nielsen mentioned, aesthetic and minimalist design is something we should aim for.
First thing I did is getting rid of most of the images. You don’t need to saturate your site with images to make it look entertaining. Actually, most probably you are going to make it look crowded. And the viewers will get mentally drained. Less is more.
The lack of imagery can be balanced out through the use of color. On top of that, if you manage to make use of color as a way to identify categories within your page, you are killing two birds with one stone. The Weinschenk and Barker classification already determined that the interface should not overload the user’s cognitive, visual, auditory, tactile, or motor limits.
While rethinking the site’s structure, I tried to imagine the city of the future. Which would be the citizens main concerns? What would make a site truly useful for everyday checkups? I believe subjects like climate and pollution will be crucial — if they aren’t already — .
I decided to give these topics the presence they deserve, moving them from the bottom to the top of the site. I wanted to make sure that all users would get a clear view of the city’s current state right away. Through this panel, visitors will have access to current climate, pollution levels, car-traffic and public transportation.
As I mentioned above, in the original site, each page has an information bar right underneath the menu, with the popular links of that same page. The way it’s been layout, it looks as it was the breadcrumbs of the site. Another confusing thing, is the User account panel. In the original site it is located almost at the bottom and it has long descriptions with several links that redirect to the same page “Mi madrid”. I transformed everything into a single button, that takes you to your user account. I placed Mi Madrid button with the popular links panel as a sidebar at the top of the page, next to the City’s current-state panel.
News are good and important, but usually when someone access these type of sites they are searching for some service or activity in particular… So I would place the news on a sidebar, so they are accessible and visible for everyone, but without getting in the way of the site’s workflow.
I simplified the style of the events panel. I made a slideshow to see the highlighted events in a glance, without having to scroll down endlessly. I tried to homogenize the image-style so it didn’t look as overwhelming, and I changed some of the titles.
In the secondary pages, I got rid of the images on the headers. I also removed the current secondary titles “Portada” as they were not adding anything. That allowed me to scale-up the main titles. I used color on them to help categorize and boost the overall look of the site.
In this specific exercise, I worked on the secondary page of Culture, Leisure and Sports.
The problem that this section presented, is that it contains three very different subjects together. A user in search for the basketball tournament in his district, is probably not going to care about the Symphonic Band events. For that matter I divided the categories into two — Culture & leisure and Sports — and I set up individual buttons right at the top of the page to have quick access to each subject.
If we wanted to dig deeper into the performance of this pages, we would probably need to reevaluate what content is necessary to be included at this point. If we want people to get quick access to the information they seek, we need to be concise and get rid of superfluous content.
Design-thinking on this particular website made me want to go all Marie Kondo-style and get rid of everything. There is a lot that “doesn’t spark joy” around here… and there is definitely a lot of work to be done here; but I hope you enjoyed my humble approach.
Why are governmental sites so overwhelming?
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