ICANN’s main site has been given a drastic facelift.
The organisation’s website had come under a lot of criticism due to the massive amount of information published on it which was rendered all but inaccessible due to the site’s poor layout and navigation.
Over the last couple of years there have been a number of tweaks made to the layout and style and whether this latest update is “final” or just another phase in the rollout of a new design and layout structure isn’t clear – the organisation’s blog has nothing on the subject
The new look is definitely a move in the right direction:
The website footer now has a fairly comprehensive set of key topic areas which you can explore:
It’s a lot crisper and cleaner than what was there before, but if you don’t believe me here’s a not so gentle reminder.
Via Archive.org here’s how it looked in December 2010
And this is how it was back in 2008
But these are all a million miles away from the way it looked back in 1999 shortly after ICANN came into being:
Now maybe we’ll actually be able to find the information we’re looking for on there without losing our minds! 🙂
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Hi Michele, thanks for chronicling the gradual improvements on ICANN.ORG. What you see today is nothing like the end of the journey — it’s more of a “shot over the bow” to signal to the community that we’re finally beginning to take the site in hand. This is the beginning of a comprehensive project that should conclude with a fully redesigned site, much more navigable and sensible, by the end of this year.
You’re right to point out the lack of any comment on ICANN’s blog. My blog entry is still in review but should appear there tomorrow, if not sooner.
Scott
Thanks for taking the time to post a comment.
I’m glad to hear that there will be more improvements. Do you have any idea of what kind of timeline we’re looking at? ie. will we see a gradual rollout of the new look and feel or is it likely to be unveiled in one go?
Regards
Michele
A fair question! That part is being decided still. The trade-offs are that we definitely want community input, but are wary of what happens when you Design by Committee.
The community has had a lot of input thus far. The original Revere Group study that Kieren commissioned drew 279 responses, which Revere followed with 8 in-depth user interviews. Staff members conducted interviews with 9 GNSO users, such as Chuck Gomes and Mikey O’Connor. In 2010 we did more in-depth user interviews, especially with At-Large members. I don’t recall the exact number conducted in total but I can document at least 27, all focused specifically on user behaviours: What are you trying to do when you go to ICANN’s site? Can you do it? How hard is it? What workarounds do you use? What sites do the same thing, but better? (and so on). At that point MUCH of the responses were repeating what we had already heard, so we felt we had gotten the picture.
I’m not saying we don’t want or need any further community input — far from it. Just thought I’d make clear that the ICANN community has had a hand, and are very much the audience we want to empower with the redesign. I will post progress on the ICANN blog as we hit the various stages where input would be helpful.
Michele, I’m always open to your feedback, as you have appropriately expressed concern on this topic before. I can go into more depth with you off-line if you like.
Scott
I was more interested in the timelines rather than the process behind the decision 🙂
I’d agree wholeheartedly that doing anything by committee is hard, if not impractical.
Garnering input, as you’ve already done, is key
Thanks for your comments
Michele
Hi Michele,
Couldn’t answer your question about timing in full before today, because I had not yet briefed the Board. Now that that is done, I’ll announce a date here on your blog.
There are lots of internal milestones we have to hit involving technical matters (for any techie reading this, using tools such as Jenkins, Varnish, Solr, and Git to help us set up staging and production environments). I don’t think these dates matter much to the community.
The date I would draw your attention to is the week of October 10 – 14. We are targeting that time frame as the date when we want to have drafted the completely new information architecture (as in, conceptually, where do things belong so you can at last find them on the ICANN site?). That week we will turn to the community to “check our work” and weigh in on how to improve the categorizations. This will be wire frame work, not art, so that we really can move things around when sound ideas come in.
We haven’t fully decided how we will interact with the community that week. We need thoughtful responses, not just “I like purple!” Our most likely tools would be a webinar with Q & A, and some 1:1 consults with folks such as Michele and Avri who have insight into the online needs of ICANN participants. I’m open to your ideas on how to do it, and who should be involved.
So, a pledge made out here in front of God and everybody: We will not role out the website in December with a big shout of “SURPRISE!” We commit to first checking with the users of the site to influence what we’re doing. Sitting here in August, that week in October is at least one point I can identify now, where ICANNers can “help us help you.”
I hope that gets more to the heart of your question, Michele. Looking forward to your input on the redesign!
I think the best way to signal progress to the community, is to launch the GNSO website, not to paint over the ICANN website.
My grandmother always warned me to finish one job, before you start the next.
Chris
Hasn’t the revamped design for that been ready for over a year now?
Michele
Let me demonstrate “guy” behavior here — ie, delivering compelling arguments without a shred of underlying knowledge.
In Scott’s defense, the reason the GNSO site isn’t rolled out yet may be because the underlying architecture isn’t done/approved yet. If I were in Scott’s shoes, I might be wary of locking myself into architecture prematurely with decisions I make in a sub-site.
/guy-behavior