Naive by Design

Every industry’s got ‘em: awards set by peers that help outsiders - potential clients, for instance - separate the wheat from the chaff. And for this purpose, they can be very influential. For example, I know nothing about building, so if I were choosing a contractor to help me blow 10 years’ worth of salary on a house, I’d choose the guy with the accolades. Likewise, when you’re building the next IWantYourSSIACash.ie, you’d be wise to hire the firm that’s won the shiny trophies (or in this case, shiny spiders). And let’s face it, the awards that bill themselves as the “Online Oscars” must be pretty damn good! From the Golden Spiders site:

The annual search is on again, for the much coveted eircom Golden Spider Awards. The eircom Golden Spiders are widely regarded as the oscars of the internet industry and were established exactly this day 10 years ago - to reward excellence in design, functionality, creativity and innovation in Ireland’s internet industry.

So What’s the Problem?

The problem with the “Online Oscars” mirrors that of the Oscars held each February in Hollywood: allegations are rife that “the judges are either hugely biased, utterly incompetent or the whole thing is a total fix”. Those are the words of Ken Stanley, who I think has cause to feel more than a little aggrieved. Ken submitted his site, HuntForProperty.ie, to the “Best New Website Launched in 2006″ category, only to find out that his two main competitors (Daft.ie and MyHome.ie) have no less than three judges on the panel! For the price of €100, Ken got to see his competitors snub his site and nominate themselves for two awards each! I told a few friends outside the industry of this and they laughed out loud. One said “how Irish”!

The Nominees

Not only was Ken’s site passed for the shortlist, but those that did make it can only be described as amongst some of the most amateur and poorly executed sites on the web today. They display a complete lack of competence in the firms that created them. To think that these sites are the Fruit of the Web in the year 2006 is heart-breaking; but to know they come from Ireland is as surprising as the verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein. I’d like to review a handful of the sites from the category Ken entered to dispel the myth that they exhibit “excellence in design, functionality, creativity and innovation”. Richard Hearne has already reviewed the sites from the point of view of standards compliance, so I won’t repeat that here. His in-depth reports make for interesting, but depressing, reading.

Affordable Homes Partnership

The Affordable Homes Partnership is a state agency established in August 2005. Its main aim is to drive and co-ordinate the delivery of affordable housing in the Greater Dublin Area, with particular reference to the Dublin Metropolitan Area.

This is a large site and does a reasonable job at managing the great amount of content it holds (although most of what it holds are PDF documents). Its information architecture is designed logically; the home page is heading in the right direction in terms of partitioning the incoming traffic (Local Authorities, Construction Sector, Affordable Homes & You). But it suffers from one major problem that ruins the otherwise straight-forward composition: it’s illegible. If it had been tested on a non-Windows setup, its developers would have noticed that the font, Tahoma, that they used for all of the site’s content, does not (by default) exist on non-Windows platforms! This means that on my Mac machine, for example, I’m left looking at the default Times font, which doesn’t render well at such small sizes. I have 20/20 vision and it’s difficult to read. Our visually impaired friends can forget about it.

ExamSupport

ExamSupport sells Video Learning Packs for Leaving and Junior Cert students.

This site’s got a cluttered and awkward design; it’s got that in common with most of the others on the shortlist (at least the judges are consistent!). There is so much going on on the homepage, I don’t know where to look. And neither will most of their visitors. ExamSupport need to decide on their primary objective for new visitors to their site and stick with that. The context of most elements on this site is all over the place. It looks like someone loaded a shotgun with divs and fired it at my screen. For example, why is the “Shopping Cart” link (a functional page for the user) given the same context (position, weighting, style, behaviour) as the “Pop-up Blockers” link (an informative page, relatively low on the priority ladder)?

HomeWise.ie

HomeWise.ie offers the largest most comprehensive online directory and information centre on Home Improvements in Ireland.

Cluttered, awkward, confused; and familiar for these reasons. Again, HomeWise.ie need to set their primary goal for their homepage. I’m presuming they’d like you to search for a supplier, if you’re a consumer, or sign-up to their site, if you’re a supplier. The problem is, they’re also trying to cash in on on-site adverts, push featured products and about two dozen other things too! I appreciate their business model includes these features, but if they’re primarily a services search engine, they should focus on that first. I guarantee that if they held back on their supplementary features untill a visitor is within their site, they’d do a lot more business. I’m talking at least a 20% increase on supplier searches and the same for sign-ups. And I’d put money on that.

Onlinetradesmen.com

Onlinetradesmen.com - the stress free way to find accredited and available trade professionals nationwide. Simply tell us about your project and let us do the leg work for you.

(Quote re-typed from the homepage; they’ve got it in an image!)

Onlinetradesmen.com is the most unprofessional looking of the bunch; this site is the quintessence of poor Irish web design. But I feel bad for saying that because I get the impression it may actually be an amateur job and I really don’t want to knock their efforts. Their business idea is a good one, and I hope it’s working. (If someone from Onlinetradesmen.com reads this, please get in touch and I’ll give you some free advice on how to get your site up-to-scratch.)

The site is just so textual! It hurts my eyes and must send a great fraction of its visitors packing within seconds. Onlinetradesmen.com need to cut the clutter and explain themselves in no more than two lines. Then they need to segment their visitors into the groups relevant to their service, get them the minimum amount of information they need, and call them to action.

SellItYourself.ie

SellItYourself.ie is an Irish property website putting property buyers and property sellers in direct contact.

Again with the clutter and complexity. There is far too much going on on this homepage. Honestly, the amount of stress and mental strain these sites are putting their visitors under is unbelievable. In addition to the advice I’ve given above, SellItYourself.ie need to kick the ugly colour-scheme, give the site some space to breath (whitespace), re-align their layout (grids, anyone?) and sort out their brown-on-brown text in the “Property Search” element (probably the most important feature on the site).

I’d also like to say a little about Ken’s site; the site that didn’t make it.

HuntForProperty.ie

Hunt For Property.ie offers an unparalleled advertising opportunity for estate agents to showcase their current property portfolio.

This site has been designed with such care and passion, I want to give its creators a hug and buy them a pint. It’s not exactly to my particular design taste (although I like it more every time I visit it) and I think the text is too small, but when the industry calls (from the lips of Glenda Gilson) for mediocrity (and awards it too, for feck’s sake!), it takes a lot to keep going when a site “will do”. I know for a fact that if this site was put alongside those above and in front of an impartial and qualified panel, it would at the very least, make the shortlist.

The Next Ten Years

It’s not likely the Golden Spiders will suffer the death I’d like them to any time soon. As long as the industry is led by those who’d rather make a quick buck than a good site, there is no room for change on the horizon. Even if some new, modern-thinking leaders emerge, they’re unlikely to be favoured by the big-money sponsors who’ve too long been in bed with the big-money leaders to wake-up and get-out.

But whether the suits of our industry like it or not, things are changing outside of the Golden Spider, 1990s mindset. The demand for Web Standards is rearing its head in this country; I’ve been hired by one of the Spider-nominated design agencies to train up their guys and I’m pleasantly shocked! The demand for modern web design standards is also heating up here; more and more clients are talking about “that Web 2.0 look”.

So for my part, the best I can do is ignore the Golden Spiders, keep pushing the quality of my work and enjoy my niche. For my brothers (and sisters) in disgust, you do the same too. Forget the eircoms and find the cool clients that’ll appreciate your work. Set the design of the sites in the shortlist as the enemy of the quality work you do. It’ll pay-off in the long run, I promise. Together we’ll move the industry in this country forward and a little more in line with the rest of the world. And for the suits? Enjoy the piss-up.