Portal Olympics
Posted by Richard White Thu, 16 Feb 2006 02:06:00 GMT
Anyone looking for a really poor example of how to design a sports portal should look now further than NBC’s dubious NBCOlympics.com.
Forget for a minute the fact that I can’t even watch any of the videos on that site because of their use of Windows Media with DRM (Not just a principle thing the bloody update really won’t work); This site is absolute madness. When it loads up I have no idea where I should be looking, there are about 4 columns that all look the same (save for the left nav), with tons of smaller subsections thrown everywhere.
It doesn’t help that they use the same colors and fonts for just about everything, absolutely no differentiation. It is also the poster child for everything that is wrong with portals like this: absolutely no care for what I, the user, would want to do. They can’t be bothered with that when they are throwing 15 sections of madness and a headline slideshow my way. Clearly the intent is to drive where I go instead of letting me use the site to find what I want.
Granted, pushing user’s in a certain direction is fine as long as you also give them the necessary tools to find their own way.
But what really pissed me off is that it took me 20 minutes to find something as simple as the standings for Men’s Ice Hockey. Try it, go to Ice Hockey. Now what? Well it appears from the left nav link that we are already at Men’s Ice Hockey.
Okay then… well where are the links to the rest of this stuff? Hmmm there are some headlines, nope thats not what I want. Top stories, nope. Upcoming events, nope. These videos on the far side (that I can’t even view), nope.
Let’s scroll down maybe its down further.. Oh good a couple more ads for games, intel viiv, a fan club… sheesh.
I’ll give you a few minutes to try it, come back when you are ready for the shocking conclusion.
You ready? Remember back when we first went to the Ice Hockey page, and it showed that we were already looking at Men’s Ice Hockey via the red link on the side? Well that was a blatant UI lie. Click on the Men’s link under ICE HOCKEY. TADA!
Ugh.
