Web reDesign Awards November 2007
I am a big fan of great design, and I wanted to do something to promote the efforts some Ugandans are making to bring great looking sites to the web. So every month, if I see something great, I will applaud it here. And if I see something horrible, I will call that out too. I wont see everything though, so you are welcome to recommend a site you know and love, or hate.
Best Site: Node Six
Benge and his team took what was already a great looking site and made it better. Going with a black background is always risky, but I think they have pulled it off quite well. The new site is still clean, and more importantly, it says that this company really knows what it is doing on the web. Love this look.
Worst Site: The Monitor
This was easy. For a site that is visited daily by every Ugandan with decent bandwidth, we expected better. Instead the Monitor made a rush of things for CHOGM and came off looking cheap. Biggest problem here is that I am not sure what I should be looking at. And worst of all, content is competing against the ads for the reader's attention—speaking of which, why on earth are you advertising lingere on your frontpage?
Overall, it's not working.
On the brink: The Observer
Unlike the Monitor, the people behind The Observer did themselves a favour and did not rush to redesign ahead of CHOGM. What they have works well, but the design is beginning to look a little out of date. This site is already the established alternative to New Vision and the Monitor. They need a design that says independent and contemporary.
Reader comments
I think it is hard to even rate The Monitor website given today's standard. I tried sending some feedback through their feedback email service, and it was returned to me with a message that "that email address does not exist".
They need Divine Intervention.
Andy, I could not have said it better myself
Node Six put a lot of work into the sites we do, and sometimes it feels like we're fighting a losing battle against a lack of acceptance of clean uncluttered design, of simplicity and elegance. Most people tend to want sites that scream in their faces, throwing everything at the visitor in the hope of increasing revenues through a simple click.
One of my favourite philosophies is "form over function". I believe however super-functional your site is, however many widgets you throw in, if it's not user friendly you will not meet your expectations. And some of the hardest sites to develop are the ones that look the simplest.
I'm a huge fan of the Google homepage. Its simplicity is... well, no need to elaborate there. And it gets the job done, very efficiently. Another company that has got it's design ethic right, is Apple.
But I digress. From the entire team at Node Six, I'd like to thank you for this honour. It's good to know someone is noticing what we do.
Thanks for the awards but i was wondering about what procedure you used to come up with the winners. I would greatly appreciate if you listed at least 3 websites in category that you mentioned. For instance you would have listed the runner up, second runner up, e.t.c
You may also let the users to submit/nominate websites in the different categories, and later on vote for their favourite ones.
I did not have much of a system this first time, but I hope to have a more transparent system in place for the coming month. I like your idea about letting readers nominate websites and vote for their favourites. Categories would be great too: News, Blogs, Commercial...can't think of any others at the moment
Excellent point Wilbroad. I think I know this Wilbroad :)
For almost 2 years now, I've been thinking of a way to get internet users and developers to come together and support each other. We're actually working on a platform to help web developers, designers and even enthuthiasts come together and learn more from each other.
And having something like this, an award system for Best Something-website-related, voted on by users, designers and developers would be an excellent start to creating a community centered around web usability, aesthetics, advancement and all that.
Let me know what you guys think.
Since some of you are very keen to see this happen, how about we get the nominations going? The design categories are as follows:
Best News website
Best Commercial website
Best Non-profit website
Best Blog
Best new website
Worst website
I am quite happy to revise the categories before the nominations start rolling in.
Any ideas?
Wilbroad, thanks for the feedback.
I agree, the last time we spoke, I mentioned I didn't have any favourite Ugandan website (other than, of course, some of the ones we design). It still hasn't changed, and primarily because I have several factors when considering the "goodness" of a website. Among those we have usability, design, readability, aesthetics etc.
Many times, clients, developers, designers etc fail to answer the three questions I consider fundamental when it comes to website development.
1. What is the purpose of the website?
2. Does the functionality achieve that purpose? and
3. Does the design achieve that purpose?
Admittedly, very many times, even we at Node Six fail to answer those questions with some websites, mostly because clients have their own over-riding opinion.
Anyways, I digress. Paschal, I think I should take up that offer very soon so I don't have to post views in comments :)
A website re-design competition would be helpful, but like the Admin said, it can be tricky getting the owner of the website to implement that re-design, seeing as the definition of a good website varies from person to person.
Also, implementing something like this would require getting a fairly decent number of developers onboard. Ergo the community I talked about. Right now it's just 3 or 4 people talking about this.
Like the flow of this topic though.
I was looking at the Uganda Jobline site, last night and the conversation we have been having here came to mind. This site is a great resources on finding work in Uganda, but there is just too much going on on the home page: Job listings, polls, links and four separate ad pockets for Google's AdSense.
Anyways, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take a crack at coming up with a fresh design for the site...in under 2 hours. There a couple of reasons for the time limit. Since I am obviously not going to be compensated for the effort I wanted to save my time and make it fun all at once.
Believe it or not the pressure actually got to me in the last 30 minutes, and I was forced to abandon some details that would have made for a more complete sketch. Oddly enough, the tight timeframe made me go for a very minimalist look, which could have been the seed for something interesting. The sketch I came up with is based on the design for the Apple Pro site.
Anyways, the result of my little experiment is below:
This is quite a resourcefull topic. Iam very impressed by your review for uganda jobline. I guess most of us did not have a platform where to showcase our products for review. I call upon all the webmasters to submit their websites and let the experts advise them on how they can improve on them.
I regret the fact that you may not be compensated directly for your efforts but we all appreciate your time and for having come up a little some thing that will guide on improving the website.
Thanks for pointing out that site Emmy. I think it is well designed site.
It seems that they are still working through some kinks though. Notice how this article is dated Feb 25 2008? I guess their servers are a month ahead of the rest of the world.
Great find though. thanks.
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