Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Jakob Nielsen dissects the Olympics Web and iPad designs


I regularly feature Mr Nielsen’s opinions. He really does know what he is talking about and he writes in an engaging and direct manner. 


So what does he think about the Olympics? Read it here.

Now I know there are large swathes of Brits that hate to hear a word said against the Olympics so they should click away now or maybe have another look at the London Mayor hailing the event as the greatest thing since the creation.


He (Mr Nielsen, not Mr Johnson) believes that the: “Page design itself scores 15% higher than the 2002 Olympics site. But a disjointed overall Internet presence leads to an intolerable overall user experience.”


Not that impressed.


I was going to review the site and the iPad app for their age-friendly qualities. How can I compete with Mr Nielsen’s forensic interrogation? I will come back to the site in the future since it does contain just the sort of elementary errors that  make it difficult for older people to use.


Let’s just say that if were applying our AF Audit tool to the site and the app it wouldn’t score well.


What is so interesting about his analysis is that he gets to the reasons why the site scores so badly. They are not all design faults. A lot of the problems emanates from the politics and organisation of the Olympic ‘family’  - these are the people who should be sitting in the empty seats at the events.


Don’t let’s think this is just an Olympics’ problem (the politics not the empty seats). Whenever you start to overlay organizational constraints on top of a digital experience there is only one person that suffers – that is the user.


So I shall say no more and suggest you make a coffee and have a read. Dick Stroud

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