Design View : Andy Rutledge – White House Redux
(In answer to the questions of some, no, I did not land the White House redesign gig. This is just an exercise to address some design mistakes on the current site. Enjoy.)It is widely believed that The United States of America is the most powerful nation on the face of the earth (meaning different things depending on who’s saying it). The world moves, in some measure, to the beat of its economic drum and worldwide policies are shaped to some degree by its concerns and motivations. So “The White House = Power” is not an obtuse statement to make.
Even so, one could never be made to understand this idea by looking at The White House website because The White House website looks like a podunk, backwater town’s newsblog.
With this design examination and redesign suggestion, I have a premise. As I’m not privy to The White House’s aims and purpose for their website, I’ll have to make some arbitrary assumptions to work from. In a real redesign effort, I’d have to conduct an exhaustive discovery process and amass a comprehensive collection of relevant, contextual information in order to do a credible job. In this case, however, I’ll have to imagine that I’ve done that and now understand the following aims and purposes for this site:
* To appropriately represent the gravity of The US White House
* To facilitate access to up-to-date information concerning the goings on of The White House, The President and the Government as a whole
* To effectively present insights into the current administration’s efforts
* To portray the White House’s own spin on government and political news (sorry, it’s a fact of politics)
* To serve as a portal to other government sites and information“But wait!” you say. “How then can this exercise be anything but a fantasy if there’s no real information on which to base decisions?” Well, the fact is that this site has a host of design problems – real design problems that I’ll examine and suggest remedies for. Also, there’s that business of the website for a seat of world power conveying very little in the way of gravitas.
So as with previous Redux articles, my purpose here is to cite specific design mistakes, describe why they’re mistakes and suggest fundamentally sound remedies to them. And, again, I’m talking about visual interface design issues and how they affect usability, theme and overall message. Surely, if ever there were a website that needed to convey a strong, consistent message, it’s this one.
For those that don’t know him, Andy Rutledge has done a number of “redesigns” top show how a site could look better, work cleaner with a bit of design sense. Andy does a good job of explaining issues and then proving his thoughts…. well in this site redesign.
Tags: Art, Design, Interesting
