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Brian Lantz
Dumbing Down
(… or how the West Midlands Police
Paedophile and Pornography Squad
forced me to change our web site)
- making the UCE Web Site
more accessible
Brian Lantz
Introduction
• Background to UCE’s Site
• Browsers
• Search Engines (and the Police)
• UCE’s New Design
• The Future
Brian Lantz
UCE’s Web Site
• Marketing, Marketing, Marketing
• Designs became more ‘sophisticated’
• Lost sight of our customers?
Brian Lantz
UCE Site Development
• version 1 lost (thank goodness!)
• version 2 - graphic navigation but text from prospectuses
Brian Lantz
UCE’s Current Site
• Frames for Navigation• 13 graphics on home
page• Photos everywhere• Inaccessible - some
customers, search engines
Brian Lantz
Browsers
• Do not necessarily support even frames
• Long download times frustrate users
• No frames, low graphics, etc., does not mean boring
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Full frames
Partial frames
No frames
Data from a site with high school and high international use.
Brian Lantz
Search engines
• Robert Mapplethorpe, Pornography and Search Engines.
• No Frames Support from: Excite, HotBot/Inktomi, Infoseek, Lycos means not indexedmeans not indexed(http://searchenginewatch.internet.com/webmasters/features.html)
• Frame support from: Altavista, etc., means loss means loss of context.of context.
Brian Lantz
The New UCE Site
• Based on a table structure
main navigation
sub-navigation
graphics (more later)
main page text
Brian Lantz
The New UCE Site
• The content needs attention
Came from prospectus entries
Needs to be shorter
Needs to be rewritten by a communicator
Academics pushing towards more content
• And those graphics ...
Brian Lantz
The New UCE Site
• Those graphicsDesigned to load quickly, i.e. small, ‘Netscape’ palette …
Recycled - come from browser cache
Representative of location to assist in navigation
but also including a random graphic to highlight news or events
Brian Lantz
The New UCE Site
• The problems with this designEach page has to be edited if change.
No technophilic honey pot
• The advantages of this designMinimally browser dependent
Minimal loading time
Each page carries its context
Search engine friendly
Brian Lantz
The Future - use a Commercial Site Designer?
• Good advice from Danny Birchall (http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/website-info-mgt/1998-03/0005.html)
– Go to the designer with some clear ideas about how you want the site to look.
– The one thing you really need set the budget at the top of the discussion and say "what do I get for £XXXX?”
– Carefully spell out the accessibility you want for the site. Designers do not understand the concept of cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility.
Brian Lantz
The Future - use a Commercial Site Designer?
• But it can all go wrong– They do not understand our market.– They design for the new commercial power users.– They try to sell you their ill defined, in-house
solutions.– They do not know how to deal with knowledgeable
clients.
Brian Lantz
The Future - use a Commercial Site Designer?
• I can now reveal– We took their graphics (demanded and received
copyright)– We accepted their internal search solutions, but
required documentation so could reuse elsewhere– We rejected their Info Management System -
appeared to solve problems, but only made them– Nearly got caught in not defining deliverables
Brian Lantz
The Future - use a Commercial Site Designer?
• Would I go outside again?– Costed internal solutions not cheaper– Process of discussion with outsiders
helped– In the end may have more control over
outcome
• Maybe.
Brian Lantz
In conclusion
• Some UCE customers have low standard browsers and modems
• Sites designed for browsers above Netscape 2 close out some of our customers
• In an educational marketplace UCE cannot afford to turn away customers who want information
• But it must look good …• And above all … have quality content
