The Several Faces of Electronic Information
WEBstyle—Appearance,
Consistency,
and Ease of Use
By
Patricia B. Wood
National Partnership for Reinventing Government
March 18,
1999
FOSE,
Washington, DC
Hello.
It’s
a pleasure to be here. Two and a half years ago, I had a
major challenge thrown at me. A challenge for which I had
what appeared to be zero skills.
The
director of the then National Performance Review asked me
to manage our website and to oversee a total overhaul,
including a change of platforms. And to do it in a week
to coincide with the publication of the Vice
President’s annual report to the President.
I
said OK.
We
had lost our webmaster several months before. Before he
left, he had put web publishing on automatic pilot. I cut
and pasted the newsletters and reports I wrote into Lotus
Notes, pushed a few keys, and everything was transferred
to a GSA server.
Lo
and behold, I was a web publisher.
Since
I had more web experience at that time than anyone else
at NPR, I was the logical choice. Also I complained a lot
because I couldn’t make the documents look the way I
wanted. As a hard copy publisher, appearance, style,
formatting had always been important to me.
Luckily,
FedWorld agreed to help us out on short notice. I fell
into the expert tutelage of two people on this panel:
Keren Cummins, who was then FedWorld director, and Bob
Bunge on Keren’s staff.
With
even more luck, that week turned into a month and we got
the job done. Since then, I’ve been involved with
six or eight more sites.
Almost
all were like being baptized by fire. We had to work in a
huge hurry everytime. Last summer when we were
redesigning the NPR site, I was also working with a
wonderful interagency team sponsored by the Government
Information Technology Services Board to develop a new
site focused on IT, Access America Online Magazine.
We
do the Online Magazine site with our GITSB team and a
private web site development company, 1492 Technologies
who are also helping us create the Center of Excellence
in Information Technology Site.
These
Public/Private teams are important in creating a
professional product and make no mistake you are creating
a product.
Today
I want to pass on to you some of the things I’ve
learned, or unlearned.
I
want to give you some dos and don’ts on appearance,
consistency, and ease of use what people call "look
and feel."
At
NPR-- the National Partnership for Reinventing
"Government we stay true to our mission: Create a
government that works better, costs less, and delivers
results the American people care about.
Substitute
"website" for "government" and
you’ve got a basic premise for government websites:
Create
a website that works better, costs less, and delivers
results the American people care about.
Today,
for business and government, your website is a strategic
resource. It can save your agency money, by reducing
calls and postage, replacing hardcopy printing, and in
conducting your agency’s business.
It’s
also a virtual storefront. It’s where your customers
interact with your agency. As more and more American
households go online, more and more government sites
don’t just sit there--they do something. They
deliver services.
Delivering
services electronically is the vision of the Vice
President’s 1997 report, Access America:
Reengineering Through Information Technology.
"Information
technology," Vice President Gore said, "was and
is the great enabler for reinvention. It allows us to
rethink, in fundamental ways, how people work and how we
serve our customers.
This
vision includes moving across agency lines to identify
customers and collect information, forms, and services
suitable for customer groups on one-stop sites. Just last
month, many agencies worked to create a one-stop site for
seniors.
Content
is king, but the way your website looks will help you
deliver both information and services.
For
example, NPR’s site is for reinventors and their
partners, students, researchers, and finally, the general
public. It contains all the official reinvention
documents, long or short, and reinvention news, including
agency activities.
A
focus group of federal workers last summer loved the
proposed newsletter format. They wanted as many topics on
the homepage as possible and wanted to see as many as
possible without having to scroll. They told us to reduce
the size of our logo and other graphics. They said they
didn’t want to hunt for information. We went from a
menu of 10 topics on our previous homepage to 41 in the
new design.
Here
are some WEBstyle guidelines. I’m going to use www.accessamerica.gov
to illustrate some of the tips.
ASSUMPTIONS
- Build an empowered web team with the
skills you need graphic, technical, writing;
marketing
- Determine the purpose of site.
- Put customers first. Know your customer
and ask what they want.
- Hold focus groups. Show customers a
mock-up of design and topics.
OVERALL
APPEARANCE
- Use a graphic artist.
- Design for 640 pixels.
- Test on early-version browsers.
- Organize by topic, not agency
divisions.
- State purpose of site.
- Use a "tag" line.
- Keep your design simple. Small is good
small graphics, short headings.
- Design for scanning, not reading.
- Don’t use unreadable colors like
yellow on light background for headings and text.
- Keep a consistent look throughout the
site.
- Avoid frames.
- Avoid moving parts or keep to a
minimum.
CONTENT
-- Appearance and Writing Style
- Use plain language. This is a
governmentwide reinvention initiative. Use active
voice, pronouns, and short sentences
- Avoid wall-to-wall words on document
pages for readability. The human eye cannot take
in long sentences. Put ample "white
space" on all sides of a paragraph.
- Avoid all caps except for short
headings.
- Break up long documents.
- Date every document and give contact
information.
- Use bullets.
- Use lots of headings.
- List contents and link.
- Give customers a choice whenever
possible html, PDF, and Word or WordPerfect
FEATURES
Certain
features make your site trustworthy, reliable, and easy
to find and use:
- Descriptive metatags
- Frequent updates, daily if appropriate
- Link to free Adobe Acrobat Reader and
other utilities
- Search engine
- Index
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Text version and alt tags
- Library or archives
- Internal and external links in
abundance
- Comment forms, technical and content
- Organization or sponsor(s) name, logo,
address and contact information on homepage and
other visible pages.
- Privacy Statement
National Partnership for
Reinventing Government
www.npr.gov
Access America
Online Magazine
www.accessamerica.gov
Send
your reinvention and information technology stories to
Pat Wood at pat.wood@npr.gov.
