NOTE: This is content from the web re:Brand posts going back to November 2010. We have kept the re:Brand posts as a legacy archive but, on a go forward basis as of October, 2011, the new DATA eh? content takes over this space.
This isn't about the election next fall but rather I want to take a tongue in cheek quick track of something.
We had an anonymous comment on hating the colour blue on our website.
Not promising anything here but, really, what's the import of colour on your impressions landing on toronto.ca?
You can comment hereor vote at the quick poll on the right side nav: "Colour Concerns". (poll now closed summation in the comments)
#8/2009
This isn't about the election next fall but rather I want to take a tongue in cheek quick track of something.
We had an anonymous comment on hating the colour blue on our website.
Love to know what colour you see Toronto and toronto.ca? How significant is the colour to you? Is colour a deal breaker for you?"I HATE that blue! it is very corporate and boring looking and looks like every website prototype in the universe. I don't see Toronto as blue, anyway."
Not promising anything here but, really, what's the import of colour on your impressions landing on toronto.ca?
You can comment here
4 comments:
The blue is to dark too conservative!
Why not take a lesson from the vanguard of user-driven design decisions and look to Google as exemplar of the state-of-the-art.
Recall this NYTimes feature on Google's Marissa Mayer, who had her team test 41 shades of blue with thousands of users before coming to a click-justified decision to shift tones.
Jury's still out on whether this level of rigor should drive all interactive design decisions, but the wisdom cuts deep to your project here: data rules. Sidebar polls of ten visitors who've shuffled through this back alley aren't going to be nearly as informative as analytics already mined from the current live site.
See today's blog post by Google's Avinash Kaushik on analytics for government sites (via tweet from @google) for guidance on where (and how) to look at the data if trying to better understand users' experiences. Might be of help to you and your team if able to re-calibrate your approach and get into some serious analytics on this redesign.
Look forward to seeing where this takes you.
David thanks for this. The linked Kaushik material is pretty clear isn't it?
We are preparing a package of the toronto.ca vision for the blog. When that's up I'm sure we'll get more reactions. Would love to hear back from you again.
So the colour poll is now closed and we had 11 voters.
Split evenly with 4 saying colour is "important" and 4 saying "colour needs to have context". "Anything but blue" had 2 votes and "Don't care" had 1.
I learned from this:
. I can get some quick response via a poll (vs. comments)
. We aren't stupid when it comes to understanding there is a relationship with colour and context
As an asisde, it's been obvious for a while the current relationship in our portal colours (blue, purple, mustard and green) isn't obvious to all. Indeed, it's a fine line when making navigation schemes.
It will be of interest (I hope) to note we aren't beholden to keeping the current colour scheme in the new pages.
Thanks for clicking y'all.
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