Oz Politics Blog

I came across a critique of my blog this morning. Kelly’s DDP Blog has reviewed my site and another — Extraordinary ordinary guy in Japan — in terms of how well our designs fit their purpose and the needs and expectations of our target audiences. It sounds like a school project. Still, why me?

On some aspects I passed,

In The oz politics blog, ‘symmetrical balance’ is achieved: both the left and right side of the page have fairly equal visual weight. The effect of this is that readers’ are allowed to focus on the content, not being distracted by the design.

…

The oz politics blog uses a range of graphics including tables, and column, line and bar graphs, to display statistical data. These types of graphics can help readers ‘grasp trends and other numerical relationships much more quickly than they could from sentences’ (Anderson 2003, p. 269). Furthermore, they also break up typed text and can make reading more enjoyable.

On some aspects I failed,

The position of the contents bar in The oz politics blog hinders the sites usability. It being positioned horizontal at the top of the page means that as readers scroll down they lose access to the links it provides. Readers are forced to scroll all the way back to the top if they want to use the links. ‘A well-designed site offers good navigational tools to give the reader a clear, quick, and consistent method to move within the site’ (California State University Sacramento 2002).

Another disadvantage of the contents bar in The oz politics blog, is that it doesn’t display via a drop-down box the titles of previous entries. The reader has to click on either the word ‘blog’ or ‘previous entries’, and wait for that page to load before they can view the available titles.

But the sting was in the tail,

While The oz politics blog is extremely informative and educational, there are no direct requests for reader participation, and the language doesn’t acknowledge the reader very often. This could be a contributing factor to the low number of reader responses this site receives. Each entry only receives 1 or 2 responses. However, in saying this we should also consider the fact that the site’s main topic, Australian politics, may have a smaller audience.

…

Perhaps the deciding factor on which blog is better, if a decision has to be made, lies in the fact that more people are interacting with Extraordinary ordinary guy in Japan than The oz politics blog? While the comprehensiveness of the information presented within The oz politics blog cannot be denied, at the end of the day if the site’s not being used then what’s the point?

Comments welcome!