Government Gets Face Lift
Forrester Research, one of the web's foremost for evaluating user experience online, gave a review of the newly designed FirstGov (www.firstgov.gov) site. This site connects to other federal, state, and local sites, providing access to a wide range of information and services like applying for government jobs, renewing a driver's license, and checking patents and trademarks.
Government sites have been mostly difficult to understand and generally not user friendly. According to Dick Cheney, regarding the re-designed site: "It's an attempt to remedy one of government's oldest problems: the slow, confusing way it responds to the public." Forrester's response to the new deisgn was that Mr. Cheney was right and that the new design works. It passed 9 our of 12 basic criteria for solid design.
Overall, the site is organized. Even with a plethora of government information , the site is divided into three primary areas: 1) citizens interacting with government; 2) business interacting with government; and 3) governments interacting with government.
Accessible. The Fed walked the walk on accessibility -- following Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act, which requires government agencies and some of their vendors to make sites accessible to users with disabilities. Key design elements: Text font sizes are large enough for easy reading, and all graphics have alternative tags. But the site could be better. How? Don't place blue text over a blue background.
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