Sponge Project Blog

The British Computer Society (BCS) is running a competition for the Best MP website. So with this in mind I thought I’d do some browsing to check the quality of MP websites here in Gloucestershire. Over the coming weeks I’ll run a series of short articles summarising my findings. These aren’t personal slurs or criticisms, just genuine constructive feedback.

Design, engagement and accessibility

Using the BCS’ three judging categories of design, engagement and accessibility, I’ve run a series or tests for the MPs for Gloucestershire:

• Martin Harwood Lib Dem for Cheltenham
• Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Conservative for the Cotswolds
• Mark Harper Conservative for the Forest of Dean
• Parmjit Dhanda Labour for Gloucester
• David Elliot Drew Labour for Stroud
• Laurence Robertson Conservative for Tewkesbury (my local MP)

Last year’s winners

As a comparison here’s last year’s winners to show what the BCS think constitutes a good website. I must say they got it spot on with Derek Wyatt’s site. Good looking, detailed, easy to use and even has it’s own sub-site dedicated to videos of Derek’s appearances in Parliament and around his constituency.

Watch this pace

So keep you eyes peeled for the results of my findings over the next few weeks.

Inspired by Stephen’s post.

So I’ve had enough of the design contests for now and of the 4 contests I entered I averaged 2 stars, which is pants. I think this boils down to the lack of time and not being able to give enough polish and detail to each contest. Anyway, I won’t give up and will keep plugging away.

So after listening to Seth Godin go on about Squidoo for so long I finally caved in and setup my own lens. There’s two at the moment:

• Website design for schools talking about the things to consider when setting up a school website; and
• Tewkesbury - a medieval market town in Gloucestershire, UK which is kind of self explanatory (I hope)

In time I hope to add some more, for which I have a few ideas, but in the meantime feel free to drop by and leave a comment.

More information on my “Design contest debate” following on from last week’s post. So here goes:

• Entered one extra contest above and beyond the ones already entered into. Lesson learnt - too many contests = bad! Essentially I took too much on and ran out of time and focus which affected all of my entries (of which none won!).
• Content holders and/or clients seems to like lots of generic and cheesy stock imagery. Lesson learnt - use more images in my designs.
• Logical structure and layout don’t seem to play a part in winning designs. In fact the more you cram onto the page navigation and content-wise the better your chances of winning! Also contest holders are not always the end client, in many cases they are another design agency. No lessons learnt, just observations.

So carrying on regardless with a few more entries, but the main thing against me at the moment is time. Balancing a full-time job and family life against contest entries is affecting the quality of my work and the amount of polish I’m able to give it. So less is more when taking on new contests. I’ll be focussing on one per week I think and see how that goes.

Checklists are all well and good, but by ticking the items off it doesn’t always mean your site will meet the grade. However Aaron’s written a very useful accessibility checklist that will come in very handy to anyone looking to create an accessible site. It’s beauty is it hits all the right notes, but still manages to be concise enough for one page. Great stuff.

Link via Cameron Moll.