Well-Designed: Remembering Jim Crow
americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering
This site was developed by National Public Radio and its main intent is to provide users with access to radio interviews with black people who lived in the segregated Jim Crow South. There are photographs and some historical background information but the emphasis is on the interviews with people whose daily lives were severely circumscribed by these repressive laws. This site appears to meet many of the criteria discussed in the Williams-Tollett book. The allignment is consistent and the links are underlined and are clearly associated with the explanatory sentences. Each page is clearly identified with the homepage with the same logo at the top and with a similar layout and color scheme on each page. The contrast of the text with the background is clear and the pages are easily navigable so that you can go from one page to the next without returning to the homepage.
Poorly Designed: Raid on Deerfield-The Many Stories of 1704
This Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association site deals with an incident in February of 1704 in which a band of Indians and French attacked the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killed 41, and captured 112 others who were forced to march to Canada. Many of the captured were repatriated but one third of them chose to live with their captors. The homepage invites users to enter and then presents them with ten small pictures which look like thumbnail links but are not until you link to the"go to the story menu." The four main links including "go to the story" are listed on the right with nine more links arrayed across the bottom of the first page. It is confusing that two of the nine bottom links are the same as two of the four main links. If you click some of the thumbnails on "go to the story" (not all are active), you are shown a color drawing of an incident related to the attack. An arresting feature is that as you move the cursor over figures depicted in the picture, the caption at the bottom of the picture identifies the significance of that figure. The overview to the right of each picture presents a brief history, which has to be scrolled, of the events in the picture often with links to maps, definitions, or descriptions. The links are a distraction from the narrative. There are also links to audio lectures discussing the Deerfield attack. Certainly this site provides an abundance of information but it seems excessive. It's almost as if the authors of the site were determined to cram in every single sliver of information that was available related to this incident. The result is a site that initially provokes some interest but eventually produces the urge to exit.