Critique-+Metro+(wmata.com)


 * Critique: Metro**  **By Victor King**

Metro's homepage is responsible for conveying a wide variety of information about Metro in general, news related to Metro, and all the information about transportation options, fares, maps, timetables, and everything else you might need to know to take public transportation in the Washington DC area. The web page also features a trip planner, service status updates, accessibility information, and real-time arrival information. **Low-level items (spelling, fonts, colors, layouts, etc.)** Spelling and grammar seem to be consistently good. Fonts and colors work well with a general blue theme for headers and standard black type for sentences. This helps the individual sections stand out and the small black type allows for information to be presented in complete sentences without making the page too busy and preserving whitespace, of which there is plenty. The exception to the blue theme on the home page is the “service status” section, which has a green theme, probably to differentiate it from the trip planner above it. It detracts somewhat from the overall ascetic and could be relocated or otherwise differentiated from the trip planner, but overall it looks fine. The blue and green color scheme is repeated throughout the site and generally works well. The home page also features a slideshow front and center, displaying images and text related to various news items. It stops the page from being all or mostly text, but takes up a bit too much space in my opinion; I would have made it smaller.

**Middle-level aspects (consistency, error handling, writing style, menu design, etc.)** Consistency is high. The drop-down menu bar at the top of the page never goes away, and all the pages other than the home page have another menu on the left that repeats the choices in the drop-down menu of the section of the site. Text and information is always in the center with other varied boxes of information optionally appearing on the right. Consistency is definitely a strength of the site. Menu design is also a strength, with all information being grouped into categories that make it reasonably efficient to find what you're looking for, although the sheer amount of information crammed into the web site is a bit of an issue, although it is handled well. The writing style is consistently straight forward and informative, as it should be. Error handling is mostly only needed for the trip planner, and it is generally done quite well. When an address doesn't have an exact match, the system will give a list of possible matches. There are clear examples for how to enter the address information, although if information is entered incorrectly (such as by using commas or zip codes), the system doesn't pick up on what the problem is, and instead simply fails the search. It would be better if the system could, for example, determine when a zip code is entered along with an address and simply ignore the zip code instead of letting it corrupt the entire search.

**High-level concepts (information architecture, navigation, audience appeal, privacy protection, credibility, etc.)** The site scores highly on high-level concepts in general. Information is first organized into broad categories, with each category having several sub-categories. All of these categories and sub-categories are constantly available from the top menu, allowing easy navigation. Links are common in text, allowing readers to jump to a different section of the site if they want information related to what they are reading about. Informative images and pictures are also fairly common, which helps keep various pages from seeming like walls of text. Overall I'm very impressed by the Metro website. Considering the amount of information they need to provide, it is easy to find just what you're looking for.