Even though I was born in the Keystone State, home of this nation's very first capital, and grew up not five minutes from Washington's winter encampment at Valley Forge, I have not thought about Pennsylvania nor have I visited in quite some time. So nostalgia prompted me to plug the Pennsylvania Historical Society (www.hsp.org) into the WayBack Machine and see how things have changed and progressed for this particular institution in their digital world.
The HSP first went "online" in 2000 with a fairly usable site, which Steve Krug would be pleased to note that it does not make the user "think too hard." The main part of the page featured a special exhibit and collection, providing clearly underlined, blue-fonted links to read further about. The only problem with this is that many of the underlined, blue links are typed onto a navy blue background, making the links nearly impossible to read. Whomp. Overall, the site was well-organized but certainly lacked the refined design of its later sites.
Jumping ahead to January of 2004, and I was sorely disappointed to see a very cluttered, confusing site. While the site index was clearly labeled, again offering well-defined, underlined, blue-font links, the central area of the site was largely cluttered with banner-style links. Each link was designed differently and detracted from the overall aesthetic of the site.
By 2008, the creative design had caught up with the functionality of the site to produce a usable, aesthetically pleasing website. Each link is clearly marked, and the site has again utilized the center space for featuring an exhibit extremely well. As Krug notes, less text is more, and this holds true for the HSP page in 2008.
The website today is fairly similar to that of 2008, with minor organizational adjustments. They still play by the rules of limited graphics and colors, as stressed by Cohen and Rosenzweig. Each click is clear and easy, another step in the right direction according to Krug.
After reading chapter 2 and 4 of Cohen and Rosenzweig, I have a much better understanding of what went into the creation of such a site. While I may tend to be more critical of websites hereon out, I will for sure acknowledge the time and effort that went into many of the extremely usable and well-designed websites I use on a daily basis.
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