Government
How can the DC Council website improve?
The DC Council is looking to improve its website. That's welcome, since there are many confusing elements. What would you improve?
For me, the organization of the home page is not very helpful. There are a lot of random links on the left side in boxes, on the bottom in different size boxes, on the right side in a scrolling ticker, in the center in a rotating image, and even a few at the very top. Most of the useful information is in links within the navigation bar, where it's harder to find.
All pages on the site have a sidebar which is mostly useless. The top is filled with today's weather. How many people are going to go to the page for the Council of the District of Columbia to find out the weather? There's news on there, but why does that need to be on each page? That's the kind of thing that should be on the front page, but isn't.
I watch hearings often. If you go to the "MEDIA" menu, there are separate links Watch Hearing Live and Watch Hearings Live. The first goes to the channel 13 cable feed, which requires you to listen to a welcome message (ironically still from Chairman Vincent C. Gray) before seeing anything. The second goes to another system that shows separate live feeds from each office.
A lot of pages don't have much information on them, like Programming Schedule, which just has a single link to the OCT TV-13 page. If there's just one link, send people directly there instead of making them view an intermediate page.
There are multiple separate calendars. The first one, Daily Schedule, goes to an interactive calendar application which just has the names of committees holding hearings in the grid. You have to mouse over each one to see the topic of the hearing.
Other items, like the annual budget and oversight hearings, show up in yet another, separate list.
Most of the important information only appears on the Legislative Calendar page, which shows what's up for votes. It's just plain text, however.
A Hearing Notices page lists upcoming hearings, and that has gotten a lot better from previous years by at least including the topic of each hearing instead of a plain list of dates below the name of each committee. One remaining problem is that the URL for this page is "2011hearingnotices"; last year it was "2010hearingnotices." That means if I set up an automated script to notify me of changes to this page, I have to change it every year.
There are links for past hearings for each committee, also under "MEDIA," but that only has archived videos from 2010, For example, the
Public Works & Transportation Committee page has its last hearing on 12/14/2010. But if you go to View Past Hearings and click on one of the only two links on that page, you get the OCT TV-13 archives which contain more recent meetings.
RSS feeds would greatly help people who want to follow the council or specific committees. There should be at least a feed of hearings for each committee or one encompassing everything, a feed of bills introduced, and a feed of items for the legislative meetings.
In short, there are too many links, many of which go to pages with little information or even out of date information that's more complete in another part of the site. A redesign is much needed and very welcome.
How do you use the site? What could make it more usable for you? I'll pass your suggestions from the comments on to the people handling the redesign.
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington. He has had a lifelong interest in great cities and great communities. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
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But, yes, to the larger point, the website is pretty confused. Better than nothing, though. I wonder who has the contract...
by oboe on Jul 21, 2011 10:36 am
But I get the feeling that no one has really taken a good look at it in a while. Local governments are unfortunately slow to adapt.
by aaa on Jul 21, 2011 10:38 am
The people in the top right of the page.
by Jasper on Jul 21, 2011 10:44 am
#2 Get rid of the quick links section.
#3 Not a fan of their drop down menu (it's hard to use on a tablet).
by Will on Jul 21, 2011 10:56 am
by @SamuelMoore on Jul 21, 2011 11:25 am
by Gavin on Jul 21, 2011 12:07 pm
by Rachel on Jul 21, 2011 12:34 pm
So I'd change that first.
by andrew on Jul 21, 2011 12:45 pm
by Bob See on Jul 21, 2011 1:49 pm
Uh, how about getting rid of Marion Barry, Harry Thomas Jr., Jim Graham and maybe a few others?
by Bob on Jul 21, 2011 3:22 pm
by Awshux on Jul 21, 2011 3:34 pm
by andrew on Jul 21, 2011 4:17 pm
by Jazzy on Jul 21, 2011 4:37 pm
by sb on Jul 21, 2011 5:03 pm
e.g.
1. More about services, less about how great is the mayor/CM etc.
2. Make it more user friendly for people visiting the city for business or pleasure.
by SJE on Jul 21, 2011 11:30 pm
hire a completely new firm who understands what user experience means.
by john on Jul 22, 2011 7:19 am
The narrative of the Ward(s) is informative but that's not what I would be looking for. There are also sub-headings: Attractions, Fire Stations, Libraries, Police Service Areas, Police Stations etc. It would be helpful to place those features on a map of the Ward, in addition to providing the address of the facility or place.
My suggestion is to add a map of all the Wards under the heading Ward Overview...DUH!
by dcdotcom on Jul 22, 2011 11:12 am
1. The information architecture doesn't appear to be thought out. Navigation at the top of the home page is a strange amalgam of links. Hearing Notices and Legislative Meetings seem perfect together but FAQs, FOIA, Privacy Policy feel more like utility navigation (and actually are all repeated in the footer). The "Webmaster" link should be relabeled and possibly added to the "Contact Us" navigation. Additionally, I wouldn't have it open an email application. Would this even work for all users (e.g. someone in a library on a public computer clicks on that link but email programs likely aren't going to be available…). An online form might be a better solution instead of the "Webmaster" email link.
2. Overall, the page is very busy.The background imagery is distracting and the DC seal behind the Council members makes the rollover text difficult to read. Ideally though, I'd get rid of both. Don't feel compelled to fill every last bit of space with content. The photo grid of members could just as easily be added to the Home/Council landing page, and preferably with images that are recognizable instead of the smallest size possible thumbnail.
3. The drop down navigation for the global navigation is also tricky to read since it's only using a partially transparent background. Go with a solid color for better legibility. As for the FY12 Budget label, change it to "Budget" and let the content change each year, not the global navigation.
4. The large slideshow image is what your eye is drawn to then you make the user go back to the box on the left to click through. Instead of having those bars on the left, integrate the copy into a larger image that fills the space.
5. The "In the Spotlight" section shouldn't also animate. There are only two items. Pick one.
6. I'm not sure I'd keep those two images in the middle row of the page. They're poorly cropped and not very compelling images.
7. The site should be structured using markup language and styled using CSS. Right now, it looks like tables are used for the structure. Also, when the text size increases, the entire layout breaks making the copy unreadable. This affects accessibility of the site.
8. The legislative calendar is tough to read (long scrolling list with text that is all similar size; dates and event names are exact same size). Better separation of the days could be made by differentiating the style of the text (i.e. color, size, etc).
And I'm not sure what the purpose of the calendars to the right are. When looking at the legislative calendar page then clicking on a date in the calendar box, I'm taken to a daily calendar with nothing mentioned even though events show up in the Legislative Calendar. Are these not integrated? A good calendar application would allow for filtering based on date range and event types and should allow a user to save the calendar event to a personal calendar.
9. Add some social media functionality. A basic "share this" widget would probably suffice.
10. Lose the Weather Report. You'd be better off putting sport scores than reminding people it's 100 degrees outside.
11. The "super footer" at the bottom seems mostly redundant to the global navigation at the top. This goes back to the overall information architecture not being entirely thought out so it might make more sense to organize these links better than have them repeated.
12. The Ward map might be better served by a "What Ward am I in" tool that could let a visitor enter an address to tell them specifically which ward they're part of and return the Ward and Council member/contact information.
Overall, I'm not sure the site's organizing structure is best the best approach. While I admit I'm not a visitor of the site I don't really see it organized by goals a visitor may have. Instead, it feels to reflect an org chart, which only helps someone who knows where everything is to begin with. I'd try to focus on what people are trying to accomplish when they get to the site and highlight those actions (and maybe it is, but the labels and heiarchy of navigation don't make it easy to decipher).
by Jamie Bresner on Jul 24, 2011 1:16 am
by John on Jul 24, 2011 7:14 pm
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