I took a quick look around at the major cities that I could think of that had public transportation systems, and I was quite surprised by the results. Some of the websites were quite nice and featured great web 2.0 designs, an emphasis on usability, nice graphics and colors, etc. Others were quite disappointing, and it was obvious that they are still languishing in the web 1.0 days.

I’ll let you judge for yourself though. Here are my top 10 public transportation websites – 5 of the best, and 5 of the worst.

The 5 best websites

1. Chicago

2. Boston

3. Washington, DC

4. San Francisco

5. Los Angeles

The 5 worst websites

1. New York City

2. Philadelphia

3. Portland (Oregon)

4. Seattle

5. Dallas

Thoughts?

Now that you’ve seen the websites, what are your thoughts? What do you think makes the 5 best ones so great, or the 5 worst ones so bad? Share your thoughts with everyone by leaving a comment below!

Without further ado, here are the websites…

The best websites

I chose these websites for a number of reasons, but mostly because they combined good, clean designs with a usable interface that easy to find the information you’re looking for.

University of Akron

Binghamton University

Butler University

Cornell University

University of Louisville

University of Michigan

Purdue University

Robert Morris College

Interestingly, scroll up and look at the similarities between this website and Cornell’s. Don’t they look strangely similar?

Siena College

Temple University

University of Tennessee

Texas A&M University

Xavier University

The worst websites

As I’ve discovered, there are a lot of bad university websites out there – and it’s not just limited to the smaller schools. It’s surprising that some of the biggest-name schools in the tournament have such bad websites, but sadly, that’s the case.

Duke University

University of Kansas

University of North Carolina

North Dakota State University

University of Northern Iowa

Radford University

University of Southern California

Stephen F. Austin State University

Syracuse University

University of Utah

Villanova

Western Kentucky University

University of Wisconsin

Thoughts?

It was hard for me to narrow down the field to the best and the worst, since there were a lot of websites that fell somewhere in between. But, now that you’ve seen these websites, what do you think of how I grouped them? Are there any that you really liked or disliked, or any that you felt belonged in a different category? Share your thoughts by filling out the comment form below!

I’m a huge fan of college basketball this time of year – but then again, who isn’t. I find championship week to be almost as compelling as the NCAA tournament itself. In a majority of the conferences, it’s win or go home – the champion gets an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, and the loser’s season is over.

I’ll use any excuse I can think of to take a look around at the state of websites related to a particular subject. I’ve written about TV channels and Olympic national teams in the past, so naturally, I felt this was good an opportunity as any to look at more websites. I went to each conference’s website, took a screenshot of it, and put them together below with links back to the website.

What I thought of the websites

I have to say that I’m not quite sure what to make of what I found. And in retrospect, I’m not quite sure what I was expecting these websites to look like.

My initial impression of these websites it that you can definitely tell that they are very media-oriented. They all feature content that probably doesn’t get a lot of media coverage elsewhere – on-campus updates, player profiles, game results, etc. – and that relates to all of the other sports that schools compete in that don’t get as much attention as basketball or football.

When it comes to the designs, if I could sum them up in one word, I’d have to use the word “busy”. I wasn’t particularly blown away by any of the designs, and there were a few things that I noticed that seemed to go against good design principles:

• Random color schemes – The color schemes were all across the board, which gave varied impressions of each conference in general. Color can have a big impact on what your website says about you, as I’ve written about elsewhere.
• Visual clutter – There were a lot of graphic advertisements and pictures that made the websites very distracting visually. A lot of these conferences probably make good money from the advertisements they feature, but when you combine those with the streaming video AND the photos AND the color schemes, the designs just feel crowded and difficult to navigate, rather than clean and usable.
• Left alignment – Most of the websites were left-aligned in the browser window, which is something that most designers don’t do anymore. Whenever I see websites that do that, I get a dated feel from them, even if they aren’t.
• Dual navigations – A lot of the conferences featured two primary navigations – one that ran horizontally across the top and another that ran vertically down the left. If I were to redesign these websites, I would suggested using a drop-down menu that might combine both navigations into one more usable format.

But, I’ll let you be the judge. Without further ado, here are the websites.

The conference websites

America East

Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)

Atlantic Sun

Atlantic 10

Big 10

Big 12

Big East

Big Sky

Big South

Big West

Colonial Athletic Association (CAA)

Conference USA

Horizon League

Ivy League

Mid-American Conference (MAC)

Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC)

Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC)

Missouri Valley Conference

Mountain West

Northeast

Ohio Valley

Pac 10

Patriot League

Southeast Conference (SEC)

Southern Conference

Southland Conference

Summit League

Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC)

Sun Belt Conference

Western Athletic Conference (WAC)

West Coast Conference (WCC)

Thoughts?

So, now that you’ve seen all of the conference websites, what do you think? Are there any that you really liked or disliked? Are there any specific improvements that you think could be made to make such content-heavy websites more usable? Leave a comment below and let’s talk about it.

P.S. – Championship Week ends this weekend with “selection Sunday”, so next week I’ll be publishing a similar post featuring the websites of the schools that are automatic bids from each conference.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Barack Obama ran for office using arguably the most technologically-committed campaign ever. The new look of the White House website is no surprise when you keep that in mind – although I must say that I actually was a bit surprised to hear about it. Considering everything else that is being talked about this inauguration day, honestly, who was even thinking about the White House website?

Thoughts on the new design

The new look of the White House website picks up where his campaign and transition websites left off. In fact, if you go to Change.gov now, there is a note saying that the “transition has ended and the new administration has begun. Please join President Barack Obama at Whitehouse.gov” – so you do get the sense of continuity from one phase of his election and presidency to the next.

Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and a contributor to the White House blog, writes that the new website is “just the beginning of the new administration’s efforts to expand and deepen the online engagement” that many Americans used to help play a role in the election.

I think what I’m most impressed with the most is how Obama’s calls for transparency and communication in government were carried over to the website. What those two things translate most readily into in web design terms is what I talk about all the time – a commitment to site usability.

What’s done well

What are some features on the new website that make it very usable and that I really like?

• Intuitive navigation – The top navigational bar has only a few simple choices, and the drop-downs that appear when you hover over a link provide links to all sorts of information about his agenda, the administration, the history of the White House, the government, and how to stay informed. They’re simple to use and look great – what more could you ask form.
• E-mail updates – This is a standard feature on many websites, but this is downright genius the way it’s incorporates here – not to mention groundbreaking. But it comes as now surprise to see the administration use this, considering Obama’s use of other technologies during his campaign, such as text messaging.
• Functional footer – This is also a commonly found design element nowadays, but again, it’s use here really fits well with the openness and accessibility that the website and administration are both trying to convey. It makes it even easier for people to find the information that they’re looking if they don’t want to use the drop-down menus at the top – again, a hallmark of usability.

Of course, the snazzy Web 2.0 design really does wonders in tying eveything together, and the web designer in me can’t help but wonder if it’s running on WordPress!

What could be fixed

I know I’m probably being a bit too nit-picky here, but there are a few small touches that I would have done differently:

• Styling the text links – The text links are the same color as the text, and aren’t underlined either, so it’s hard to tell what is a link and what isn’t. I would have done this a bit differently, since styling them properly helps with both usability and accessibility – something I detailed in another post I wrote on the subject.
• Page title tags – The page titles on pages throughout the website are very basic: “Contact Us” is all it says for the “Contact Us” page, for example. I’m sure that the White House website doesn’t have search engine optimization forefront on their mind, but it wouldn’t hurt to include some more information in them. People who use tabbed browsers would be appreciative of that!
• Breadcrumbs – Once you get into the sub-pages on the website, there is a well-styled breadcrumb bar that appears at the top of the footer area. I just wish that they would have done the same at the top of the page where it would be more visible.
• Form fields – Eye-tracking studies have shown that it’s best to put the labels on top of input fields on website forms, but the Contact Form on the website has them reversed. I would switch this up and it will look a lot better.

It’s a great start

Overall though, this is a great website that I’m very impressed with. I’m curious to see how the website grows and changes over time as more content is posted to it – pending legislation and executive orders, for example – and new features come online – such as the RSS feeds, which aren’t quite ready yet.

From a marketing angle, I think it very accurately reflects the message that the new administration wishes to convey about itself. And as I’ve written elsewhere, if the design of a website is able to help convey the right message about an organization, then that truly a great website.

Design Observations

The vast majority of the websites have sharp, modern looking designs. I really liked the lifestyle channels in particular – HGTV and the Food Network have very simple, clean, and functional designs. You can tell which ones have a focus on usability vs. a focus on multimedia content.

E!’s website is in a blog format – the only one that is like that. That surprised me, but for their audience, maybe it works.

Only one channel was guilty of still having a website that looks like it has been around for more than 5 years (that would be you, HBO). And only one (for Bravo) was downright awful – which is a shame because I love “Top Chef”, which is one of their shows.

Let’s Surf!

So without further ado, here are is a look at the websites that I found (in alphabetical order)…

A&E

ABC

Bravo

There are so many things wrong with this website, I’d be here until New Year’s going through them all. It’s definitely my least favorite, but not by much, unfortunately.

CBS

Comedy Central

Discovery Channel

E!

ESPN

ESPN is coming out with a new website soon – they’re previewing it on their website for ESPN Insiders, of which I am not one. But, from the image on their homepage, it looks like it will be a big leap forward!

Food Network

Fox

HBO

Yikes! I could go into a long rant about this website, and it’s easily my second-least favorite of the bunch. There are all sorts of problems with I have with it, but the one saving grace it has over Bravo’s website is that at least it has a site navigation.

HGTV

History Channel

I’ll forgive that the main content area is left-aligned on the page, because overall I really like this website. And, it doesn’t have the same problem that TBS has (see below).

NBC

Showtime

Spike TV

TBS

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it must be a… chicken? I really like this website – it has a clean, modern design and is very usable. But with the main content area being aligned to the left, I was a little suspicious of the design. Sure enough, it turns out that the website is still using tables to lay out their design, rather than CSS – so get with the picture, TBS! (And no, I was not intentionally trying to rhyme.)

TNT

USA

VH1

Your Thoughts?

So, what do you think – do you have any favorites or thoughts about any of these websites? Are there are any that you were disappointed with? Or maybe there are some that you visit frequently and really like? Let everyone know by commenting on my website!

So I thought I would give it some attention in my own way – by going through the list of top 25 ranked college basketball teams and taking a quick peak at each school’s website.

Why college basketball, you might be asking? Partially because I’m a college basketball fan, but more so because on the college level, there is a greater variety of website designs to look at than on the professional levels.

Some of the websites were not what I had expected at all. All of the schools on this list are major, world-renowned, brand-name universities. Yet from a design and usability perspective, some of them had absolutely awful websites. There’s no getting around it – that’s just what they are.

I won’t tell you what my favorites were, or which ones I liked the least, but you’ll probably be able to tell what I was thinking just by looking through the images below.

2008 Top 25 College Basketball Teams (Pre-season)

1. University of North Carolina

2. University of Connecticut

3. Louisville

4. UCLA

5. Duke

6. Pittsburgh

7. Michigan State

8. Texas

9. Notre Dame

10. Purdue

11. Gonzaga

12. Memphis

13. Tennessee

14. Oklahoma

15. Arizona State

16. University of Miami (Florida)

17. Marquette

18. Georgetown

19. University of Florida

20. Davidson

21. USC

22. Wisconsin

23. Kansas

24. Wake Forest

25. Villanova

Honorable Mentions

I would be remiss if I didn’t include these schools, all of which are near and dear to my immediate family. My favorite of the bunch by far is the first one – but then again, it is my alma mater, so of course I’m going to choose it!

Binghamton

University at Albany

Cornell

Siena College

Vanderbilt

Thoughts?

Now that you’ve seen them for yourself, which ones do you like and dislike? Is your alma mater’s better? Feel free to comment below and share with everyone!

It will be an incredible sight to see the delegations from all of those nations marching in during the Opening Ceremonies. So with that in mind, here is my own “parade of nations” – only in this case, my parade consists of national Olympic team websites. The “parade” starts with the official Olympic websites, both of these games and of the movement.

I was curious to see how varied these website designs could be, and I wasn’t disappointed. I was pleasantly surprised by some (Brazil’s and Australia’s websites rock), but I found myself disappointed in others (Canada’s and Great Britain’s definitely leave something to be desired).

So take a look through the list below, and maybe you’ll be as interested as I am at how similar and different these websites can be – which says a lot about how universal some aspects of communication really are.

Official Olympic Website

International Olympic Movement

Argentina

Australia

Brazil

Canada

Denmark

Egypt

France

Germany

Great Britain

Hungary

India

Israel

Jamaica

Jordan

Lithuania

Mexico

New Zealand

Pakistan

Russia

South Africa

South Korea

Sweden

Switzerland

United States