Cal’s Queensland Government design launches
Last year I worked full time for the Queensland Government, as part of the Smart Service Queensland team, where I was contracted to redevelop the main Queensland Government website qld.gov.au. Initially contracted for a short three month stint, this quickly blew out to a six month, then a nine month contract, as the site was a mess.
The website is managed using Teamsite, which regular readers of my personal blog already know, is an outdated and overhyped file versioning system.
The site had been redesigned a few years before I came on board, but there were some glaringly obvious problems with the current design, and many more issues became apparent once I began to scratch the surface.
Luckily, because it was a Government client, I was afforded time and resources to conduct extensive usability analysis of the existing design, and then also the new designs that I came up with. This was a very interesting process, and most importantly, having quantitative data when arguing for a particular change in design is invaluable. Managers love to be able to tell their bosses that X change will result in Y% more usability.
My new design put the primary navigation on the front page, where it had been missing for years, completely breaking user expectation. There is also a smattering of javascript to make the page more ‘dynamic’. It also makes use of some more sophisticated CSS techniques, and has reduced the overall file size considerably. There are some chunks of my code that were not implemented, but apprently that is a failing of the ‘CMS’ more than anything else. There are also big changes that I made that have been left out of this relaunching, but I think that they may be left for a future unveiling.
Pretty cool though, no?
Oxygen Kiosk at Unconvention Brisbane
Over the weekend, Oxygen Kiosk was involved in Unconvention Brisbane, a “not for profit grassroots led music conference for DIY and Independent promoters, labels, entrepreneurs, writers, technologists, innovators and artists.” I setup a webcast for both days of conference panels, played an audiovisual set as half of Cowper, spoke on the Music as Product panel [...]
We’re Hiring! Junior Web Ninja
We’re looking for a junior web developer/silent killer to work remotely or from our Sydney office. Official transmission follows: Oxygen Kiosk, the sleek web boutique in Sydney and Brisbane is looking for a junior web developer for a 6-month contract (with a view to executing a permanent position). We’re geekily obsessive about code and hype-free [...]
Ads For Your Blog: Simple Code for Calling OpenX’s Single Page Call Within WordPress Using current_post
Advertising is one of those “necessary evils” of the web, and of non-ecommerce blogs in particular. For blogs which aren’t associated with a particular product or revenue-generating business, advertising is the main way to pay the bills. It’s not something which generally enhances a site, but we try our hardest to ensure that it’s not [...]
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