After reading Rosarie’s blog post, I decided to take matters into my own hands. For the homepage at least.
The problem
The ‘new’ Dublin bus site (not mine) pushes all the effort and responsibility onto the user (from a utility perspective), and further, it prioritises its brand over this ill conceived functionality.
Organisations need to realize that their web presence is an integral part of the total user experience. Make your site useful, usable. Reinforce your brand with compelling and usable features, structure your site as your users want, not by your organisation structure.
My solution
This is my new Dublin bus homepage. What do you think?
August 31, 2009 at 11:47 am
The current homepage seems to tell me that they are tying to please everyone in the organisation.
Your solution puts the visitors back in the driver seat – people comes to Dublin bus website to search for travel info.
Your design gave the functionality (to search for travel info) visible – it big and you can’t miss it.
That where the ‘action’ is for the people who use their service.
August 31, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Speaking from a tourist perspective, this is so much better – particularly the map feature. Dublin bus routes are byzantine enough that sometimes it’s just easier for a visitor to search visually. The lack of so much as a printed map once in Dublin really leaves tourist stranded. But that is a different area of usability…
September 9, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Although dublin bus is not on there yet, I’m working on a transport site: getthere.ie designed around user goals.