I am a big fan of great design, and I wanted to do something to promote the efforts some Ugandans are making to bring great looking sites to the web. So every month, if I see something great, I will applaud it here. And if I see something horrible, I will call that out too. I wont see everything though, so you are welcome to recommend a site you know and love, or hate.
Best Site: Node Six
Benge and his team took what was already a great looking site and made it better. Going with a black background is always risky, but I think they have pulled it off quite well. The new site is still clean, and more importantly, it says that this company really knows what it is doing on the web. Love this look.
Worst Site: The Monitor
This was easy. For a site that is visited daily by every Ugandan with decent bandwidth, we expected better. Instead the Monitor made a rush of things for CHOGM and came off looking cheap. Biggest problem here is that I am not sure what I should be looking at. And worst of all, content is competing against the ads for the reader's attention—speaking of which, why on earth are you advertising lingere on your frontpage?
Overall, it's not working.
On the brink: The Observer
Unlike the Monitor, the people behind The Observer did themselves a favour and did not rush to redesign ahead of CHOGM. What they have works well, but the design is beginning to look a little out of date. This site is already the established alternative to New Vision and the Monitor. They need a design that says independent and contemporary.
Comments
Web reDesign Awards November 2007
I think it is hard to even rate The Monitor website given today's standard. I tried sending some feedback through their feedback email service, and it was returned to me with a message that "that email address does not exist".
They need Divine Intervention.
Clear as daylight
Andy, I could not have said it better myself
Very Honoured
Node Six put a lot of work into the sites we do, and sometimes it feels like we're fighting a losing battle against a lack of acceptance of clean uncluttered design, of simplicity and elegance. Most people tend to want sites that scream in their faces, throwing everything at the visitor in the hope of increasing revenues through a simple click.
One of my favourite philosophies is "form over function". I believe however super-functional your site is, however many widgets you throw in, if it's not user friendly you will not meet your expectations. And some of the hardest sites to develop are the ones that look the simplest.
I'm a huge fan of the Google homepage. Its simplicity is... well, no need to elaborate there. And it gets the job done, very efficiently. Another company that has got it's design ethic right, is Apple.
But I digress. From the entire team at Node Six, I'd like to thank you for this honour. It's good to know someone is noticing what we do.
Thanks for the awards but
Thanks for the awards but i was wondering about what procedure you used to come up with the winners. I would greatly appreciate if you listed at least 3 websites in category that you mentioned. For instance you would have listed the runner up, second runner up, e.t.c
You may also let the users to submit/nominate websites in the different categories, and later on vote for their favourite ones.
Taking notes
I did not have much of a system this first time, but I hope to have a more transparent system in place for the coming month. I like your idea about letting readers nominate websites and vote for their favourites. Categories would be great too: News, Blogs, Commercial...can't think of any others at the moment
Awards System
Excellent point Wilbroad. I think I know this Wilbroad :)
For almost 2 years now, I've been thinking of a way to get internet users and developers to come together and support each other. We're actually working on a platform to help web developers, designers and even enthuthiasts come together and learn more from each other.
And having something like this, an award system for Best Something-website-related, voted on by users, designers and developers would be an excellent start to creating a community centered around web usability, aesthetics, advancement and all that.
Let me know what you guys think.
Nominations for December Awards 2007
Since some of you are very keen to see this happen, how about we get the nominations going? The design categories are as follows:
Best News website
Best Commercial website
Best Non-profit website
Best Blog
Best new website
Worst website
I am quite happy to revise the categories before the nominations start rolling in.
Any ideas?
Awards System
Thanks alot Solomon,
the last time we talked about this, you said that you don't have a favourite uganda website but i belive it is high time we supported our fellow ugandan by appreciating their efforts and commitment.
I support this idea entirely and if resources can allow, the worst website should be rewarded with an extreme makeover or something similar, courtesy of the best web designers.
Worst website redesign
Wilbroad, I support the idea of redesigning the worst website. I think it would work if interested readers submit their own designs for the site. We can even ask readers to vote on which of the submitted redesigns would work best, and send the results to the site. However, trying to actually redesign a site might be tricky, given some of the sites being reviewed, such as Monitor.
Worst Website redesign
Wilbroad, thanks for the feedback.
I agree, the last time we spoke, I mentioned I didn't have any favourite Ugandan website (other than, of course, some of the ones we design). It still hasn't changed, and primarily because I have several factors when considering the "goodness" of a website. Among those we have usability, design, readability, aesthetics etc.
Many times, clients, developers, designers etc fail to answer the three questions I consider fundamental when it comes to website development.
1. What is the purpose of the website?
2. Does the functionality achieve that purpose? and
3. Does the design achieve that purpose?
Admittedly, very many times, even we at Node Six fail to answer those questions with some websites, mostly because clients have their own over-riding opinion.
Anyways, I digress. Paschal, I think I should take up that offer very soon so I don't have to post views in comments :)
A website re-design competition would be helpful, but like the Admin said, it can be tricky getting the owner of the website to implement that re-design, seeing as the definition of a good website varies from person to person.
Also, implementing something like this would require getting a fairly decent number of developers onboard. Ergo the community I talked about. Right now it's just 3 or 4 people talking about this.
Like the flow of this topic though.
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