Roland Garros what have you done with you web site?

My previous blog posting was about the phenomenon of well intentioned web designers trying improve a web site and making it more effective but that results in being distinctly worse.

The web site for the French Open at Roland Garros is a perfect example. I really like tennis and know my way around the Australian, US and Wimbledon Grand Slams sites and the ATP Tour site.

You can see the idea was to make the Roland Garros site cleaner, more dynamic and with large images. All of this is very much in keeping with current site design thinking.

So what is wrong with the site

Point 1 - fundamental issue with colour contrast - do I need to say more?

Point 2 - Where the hell is today's schedule of play? 

I am sure that one of the most used parts of a Grand Slam site is to know who is playing and at what time.  Rather than making it easier to access they put the schedule as a sub menu within 'Draws'. No doubt somebody thought it was best to reduce the items on the top line menu. Not a good idea.

Point 3 - Where is the detailed menu? 

OK, the designers have used current convention and used the triple lines on the far left hand side of the page but I bet a lot of people were searching around for ages trying to find how it was accessed.

Below you can see what the menu looks like when activated

No doubt this upgrade to the web site cost a lot and took a long time but I really don't think it has worked very well.

The top question is this - I have had to relearn how to use the site - what additional benefits has it delivered? None. Dick Stroud