My Redesign of gov web site

the above are my re-dos. >So the things I hated about the site www.usemb.gov.dr/ are that it is un-inviting, hard to navigate and understand, and a lot of real-estate was being used by information not relevant to the porpoise of the site. I chose to take out a fair amount of information off the main page and use that space for news that had barring on visa cases the site and embassy would be processing. I made the sight more inviting, toned down the irritating yellow, made the text a lighter gray that was easy to read and easier on the eyes. i made the language choice bigger and easier to find, and in both languages. I also changed all titles and Link names to more commonly used terms and/or to words that the public uses rather than the embassy. I feel good about my re-design. I have spent a lot of time with this site and the embassy and have found that they really just don't care or in fact like to make things hard and confusing. every time i call them with a question they either don't know what i am talking about or they don't understand the words i say. If i could re-do their entire sight in exchange for my fiancé's visa, i totally would! and i would save some pain for future visa seekers!

usibility test of gov web site

Usability test of www.usemb.gov.do/

Diana:
What is this sight?
A: Bands? Music? Presidents or rulers? Oohh, embassy of US in DR.

Find what you will need to apply for a k-3 visa.
A: what is a k-3 visa…Its in Spanish, she looked around, looked through all drop down menus till she saw the word visa, clicked, looked through all secondary nav: saw k-3, and clicked. Then found out it could be put in English!
Response: I don’t have any governmental knowledge, how do I find anything on this sight? I don’t care about anything on the front page-why does that info need to be there? It needs some kind of obvious direction and nav. “iyik!” and I don’t understand the bottom navigation at all.


Sara:
What is this sight?
A: tries to read some Spanish, ‘Dominican embassy sight, wait, US embassy in the DR”

Find what you will need to apply for a k-3 visa.
A: went through all drop down menus, did not find English version, complained about ‘government wording’, went through secondary nav to find k-3, very excited when she found it.
Response: hard to read when drop down menu falls, embassy highlights not relevant.


Dariel:
What is this sight?
A: I think this sight is pretty biased. .explaining all the good things and great ideas of the American government. Does not really what really is going on. Its designed to give people the impression that all is good...that no war is being waged and that things in the DR are great when it comes to the American mindset of things.

Find what you will need to apply for a k-3 visa
A: I tried finding out the instructions of what I need for a k3 visa and quite frankly the navigations is very simple...there’s nothing uber complex all is simply not titled like it should be. I wonder if its because its an embassy site for a third world country so they have to keep things really simple. but in a matter of 3 or 4 clicks I was the page I needed.

ReWrite of online artical

I chose an article from Dominican Today which is an online english dominican newspaper. the article i chose concerned the racial and marginalization of dominicans by dominicans, and how their political system and culture support this oppression. I wanted to keep a lot of the text because the article was an opinion piece and was written with the intent of evoking emotion and the writer clearly chose the words he felt were appropriate. I chose to make the article easer to read and comprehend on the internet. when i read things on the internet i appreciate it when paragraphs are broken up into 4 or 5 lined clumps, it is easer to keep my place in the text and gives me enough negative space to breath. I also appreciate highlighted phrases or words that connote importance yet the color is not so distracting that I find it hard to read the section. On the same note, I kept my link colors close to the text color so that they would be recognizable as links but not distracting. I also changed the typeface of the article to a more legible serif face instead of the large, clumpy sans serif. I am not, however, insulting Dominican Today's style or legibility of their sight, I find it very easy to read and interesting and it has a 'clean' 'openness' to it that allows me to concentrate on what i am reading rather than adds or other flashy things on the page.