The Government California Website Critique

Critique

First Impressions Count

For my website critique I drew the government of California website (http://www.ca.gov) to evaluate. My first impression of the website was that it was cluttered, unorganized and a bit distracting. I really do not like the main banner that scrolls through various images. I find it unpleasant because it doesn’t always work consistently. I also notice that the site is just poorly thought out, there are many links and it is a bit overwhelming. For my computer screen’s size I find the site overpowering and large, it’s on the brink of having to scroll to the right which is always irritating. At first glance I get from this site I feel it’s more geared to be an entertainment website over an official looking government website.

Audience and Purpose

For the Government of California website I would assume that most of the audience base would be citizens. This applies this site as a G2C site which stands for government to citizen. The purpose of this site would to be promote the state of California to people that may be interested in living there. It could also apply to businesses that perhaps are thinking of moving there to set up a location. The site offers three links in the middle of the page for its most likely audiences, Living in CA, Working in CA, and Visiting CA. These links cover your basics, the cititzens, the businesses and employees, and tourists. In all probability anyone coming to California will fall under one of those categories. The true purpose of this website is to promote the state of California to the world. I feel that this site has failed miserably by the lack of organization and the overload of blocky elements used in the websites overall layout.

Information Architecture/Navigation

Upon landing on the this site I feel bombarded by an overload of pictures, links, and the entire layout. My eye does not know where to look first to find any specific piece of information. The site is almost like a treasure hunt to find anything of value. There is a row of links along the top of the page below the main banner that reads “Ca.Gov State of California.” It is suggested that a site keep its categories of links to seven and below; however this site utilizes eight. Within these link categories there are many links subcategorized. Personally I find the site confusing and disorienting, I do not like how many “options” the site gives for the user to click on. The sub pages of the site are less cluttered and more easily navigated. There is no doubt that Ca.gov is full of information and not missing any vital pieces of information. You can find just about anything you want to know about California in this site. I just believe that the information could have been presented in a cleaner more efficient way.

Usability

I gave my friend a task to find out how to find contacts for community, health, and disaster information on the Government of California website.

I logged her onto the main homepage (http://www.ca.gov) and she immediately scrolled down looking for the right link. She finally found the links along the top of page instead of scrolling down. And clicked on “Health” (which was the wrong link to get to the information I was asking her to find). She found the navigation “slippery” and hard to control, it was easy to fall off the link and onto another category, bringing up the wrong information. She ended up clicking on the Public Health link which was still the wrong link to get to what I was asking her to find. We went back to the landing page and I reminded her that I was looking for contacts, then which we went to “About CA” which was finally in the right direction. She hit “contact us” and then found the link to community, health, and disaster information. So the overall task took way longer then necessary. She also commented numerous times on how she disliked the narrow horizontal navigation bar and that it was hard to use because you could repeatedly slip off the link into another section.

Construction & Design

Upon looking at the site’s initial first page’s coding the site is your average XHTML 1.0 Transitional page. They have used quite a bit of java scripting for the fancy moving images in the middle of the page to breathe life into the site. The creator of the site was good at using comments as there are a lot embedded in the site’s code. All the navigation of the site are based on stylized list (

) elements. It is easily noticed in this site that it was graphically heavy. There are many images used within the site. Bright colourful images of happy looking people are hopefully attractive to people, basically these images are saying “look these people are happy; you will be too if you live/visit

California!” As you can probably tell so far, I am not a fan of this site. I find the look and feel of the site is not professional enough, it doesn’t feel like a government site. It feels more like a tourist or entertainment site than anything else. The images have a commercialized feel. The colours, for a sun-filled state are actually bland, but that helps in aiding to look more governmental. The typography is tasteful and not obtrusive. I find the overall layout of the elements on the homepage easy to get lost in. The large amount of clutter and the number of boxes make it hard to focus on any one item. They could improve their site greatly by cutting the clutter and assuming a sleeker design.

Content Quality/Appropriateness of Writing

The writing on the site is thin on the homepage beyond the links and headers. All of which are self-explanatory and normal. The bulk of the content is within the sub pages as it should be. On the sub pages they provide a list of links on the left hand side bar that pertain to the page’s topic, for example: Under employment when you view the page it says on the left side bar: I need to… : Find a job, File for unemployment, Report Fraud etc. When you click on any of these links they continue onto another part of the site where you can find vast amounts of information on the subject. This site is content rich and they display it fairly well. The writing on the site is well done and professional. There are few spelling/grammar errors and the typography for readability is great. They have chosen a good sized font as well as a sans serif font for best screen readability.

The Big Picture

All in all this site, I would rate on a 1 to 10 (10 being best) around a 5. Its not my favourite website, there are a number of improvements that could be done (such as cutting clutter, removing access boxes, making it more streamlined) but it does get the job done. I find that the page that bothers me the most is the homepage; the sub pages are more governmental and professional in comparison to the land page. I find the landing page to be too touristy and entertainment like. I also think that because the site is for the state of California they should have chosen a warmer colour scheme throughout the site, the dark blue and white is really quite drab, when I think California I think yellows and oranges. The site gets the job done but I would prefer to see the above changes made. I am a little disappointed with well the coding works for the moving image element; there have been a couple times I’ve been on the site when it doesn’t work properly. For a government website, I would expect the site to function well and not have little errors such as this. I enjoyed critiquing this site because it could use a facelift, perhaps one day they will hire me?