How We Designed this Site

The design of this web site did not magically appear, nor is it the result of a whim or an individual preference. This design is the result of, amongst other things, following web standards, accessibility guidelines, and importantly the needs of modern government.

Web design is not a secret: and here's an outline of how we tackled the project.

Look at what we've got.

Put simply we looked at the site that we were replacing. We looked at:

web Server Logs - to see where people were going, and where they were not,
what was working on the present site design, and what was not,
all e-mails to the webmaster from people looking for but unable to find information.

Look at what others have got.

We researched other web sites, including:

Scottish Councils,
UK Councils,
Foreign Council Web sites (principally American, Australian, and Canadian - English speaking countries),
Government sites,
and especially how other sites with similar information were displaying it: e.g.how newspaper sites displaying news, how were large and varied number of topics being collected and organised.

It was quite amazing to see many of these sites change - and change for the better - as we reviewed and monitored them. We should point out that we paid particular attention to sites that received any praise, or awards.

We looked at Government advice.

Government provides several large documents on building public service web sites, and via the annual SOCITM reports - Better Connected, and Local E-Government.

This research enabled us to identify that our information would fit into three categories:

Council Information - i.e. information about the organisation, its work, its policies, and where appropriate - its people,
Information on how to get our services, so that people can benefit from them in their ordinary life, as well as in those big 'Life Events',
and finally information about our region and to promote it to both our Borders Residents and to Tourists from out with the area.

The main aim of the homepage became one of creating large obvious signposts to point the user to the information that they required, in one of the three varying sections.
And we wanted these in the middle of the screen.
It also became clear that by using colour we could make it quite clear which section the user was in - at a glance, without seeing a title, or having to read the text on the page. Of course using three separate colours meant moving away from the official burgundy/maroon - the whole site was official, and by using the the burgundy in only one area may cause confusion or a percieved devaluing of the content.

So which colours should we go for?

Colour is a highly contentious subject - and ultimately comes down to personal opinion. Medically, your eye is split into three types of receptors, and one type functioning better than the others can result in stronger more vivid colours - e.g. blue being a 'better' colour than anything red or green (or conversely working worse, and leading to colour blindness). Your personal psychological makeup affects things too - being frightened witless as a kid by a green alien on television may make you slightly less appreciative of the colour.

Also psychologically, colours have meanings as well - often derived from nature,

Reds can reflect love, heat, and danger,
Blues - cold, hate, clinical, and clean,
Greens - harmony, nature, money, and fertility.

All colours have an associated 'emotion' or response - and it can differ between the sexes.

And the answer: we went for colours that we thought would represent the Scottish Borders and its rural nature - Light greens to reflect spring; Yellows to reflect the summer fields, and the reds of the autumn leaves. This gave us a colour pallete to work with in each section. It also left blue to be used on the 'legal' pages and importantly a bright vibrant orange eye-catching orange (which could be used to attract attention to the support mechanisms of searching and contacting).

They green, yellow, and red were organised in traffic light sequence, with 'go' being go to the council, yellow being 'action' and the red for 'stop in the borders'.

The colours of the ancillary sections of 'News' and 'Events' were chosen to continue the rural theme.

The Logo

Web sites need to have the corporate logo identifier at the top of the screen. Our logo is of a Borders Reiver on his horse overlooking a tow wavey lines representing the Eildon Hills and the winding Tweed river. The text of the logo 'Scottish Borders' is in itallics and positioned over the wavey lines. The horse and rider are looking towards the left.

Unfortunately itallics are a big no-no on screen displays, and being positioned over the top of the wavey lines creates problems for people who are either not to familiar with western characters (perhaps they are Japanese), or have reading problems (such as dyslexia).

We wanted the horse and rider to be looking into the page, but did not want to alter the image (so that it would look the same as used on our signposts, our stationary and buildings).

With these considerations we dropped the wavey line and the text, and placed the logo on the right hand side of the screen. We also turned it a neutral colour so that it would compliment which ever colour scheme it was used with.