Every four years
Britain is gripped by an incredibly infectious fever… Football
fever. This summer, with England and the republic of Ireland
taking part in the festival of football in Korea and Japan, the
beautiful game will once again be the talking point in offices up
and down the country. For the first time, the world cup is taking
place in a time zone east of Europe and as a result most of the
games will be taking place at either 7am British time or at
mid-day. So how are workers going to follow the games? Our guess
is through the Internet.
How did the various football information portals shape up against
each other in the lead up to The World Cup?
Obviously the BBC and certain radio stations will be streaming
games live, but what about fans that can't sit glued to every
match? How will they follow their team's fortunes?
The Usability Company,
specialists in the user experience, undertook research in April to
gain an understanding of some of the issues an avid fan might
encounter when trying to get information about groups, fixture
timings and profiles of the teams in the lead up to the world cup.
A usability specialist acting as a typical user was able to
suggest areas of the sites that will cause users problems.
As in the world cup, we started
out with preliminary rounds. Sites such as www.fifa.com
and www.guardianunlimited.co.uk
still had to progress past the likes of captain England's own site
and the infamous Kok Wee site. www.davidbeckham.co.uk
features a very amusing face bending game, which lets users play
about with Becks' head, but there is absolutely nothing about the
world cup, so Captain David goes out early. Kok Wee www.kokwee.net/manutd.html
a Korean footie fan joins him in the proverbial early bath. The
only reason for his site's infamy is the terrible mess he's made
of it.
So to the quarterfinals: the BBC
takes on Sky Sports in the battle of the TV giants. On the day of
testing, the Sky Sports site is still too preoccupied with the
premiership and breezes past the upcoming competition, so the BBC
sweeps through to the next phase.
Next up is The Telegraph against
the Scottish representatives. Tenants lager have launched a site
called www.notattheworldcup.com
and while their site offers a nice selection of flags to download
from England's group, the site in it's own words "will be up
and running before David Beckham." As it turned out, the site
was launched at about the time Beckham was bouncing around on his
trampoline. The Telegraph on the other hand has the edge and in
the end there's no real contest as the Scots crash out and get
home before their postcards… again.
Fifa takes to the stage and
dances samba rings around Planet Football and then The Guardian
gets a by to the next round when on the day of testing the ITV
website is down (injuries yet again).
So now the real contest begins.
Here's a summary of the star players, the nearly men and the sites
who went home early...
The Telegraph site offered
disappointing coverage, especially considering its' good
reputation for sport. The information available is protected by a
login and registration procedure. It is likely that this will put
off or prevent large number of users accessing the information
that is present. The user is also forced to drill through several
layers of navigation to find any mention of the World Cup. Once
the user has found a link to the information (it is below the fold
line), there is surprisingly little content. The information
offered is the teams listed by group and the dates, location and
times (in the UK) of the matches in each one.
Up against the BBC, it doesn't
stand a chance. The BBC World Cup website news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/football
is easy to find and it will no doubt prove popular with large
numbers driven there by TV and radio coverage. Overall the site
got the thumbs up as it was packed with features and up to the
minute information that will interest readers. Within the team
sections the initial games are listed with the opponents, the date
and the UK time the match is being played. The location of the
match is not listed but users can click through to see more
information. The games are listed by group and not by date so it
is difficult to tell which matches are happening on a given date
without looking through the detail of the whole page.
The other newspaper site
'Guardian Unlimited' proved frustrating. The World Cup section was
shown below the top menu and the headers take up approximately
80%, of the screen at 800x600 resolution. This makes finding
content difficult for users and does not help to engage users. The
teams in each group are not listed so it is difficult for users to
know which group to pick in order to find out about the teams they
are interested in. Once they have chosen, in knowledge or in hope,
they are faced with a huge page of text. This page initially tells
the user which teams are in that group, but then goes on to give a
general synopsis of the team and their history, rather than up to
the minute information about their chances and the players
involved. It is not possible to get the fixtures list for each of
the teams or the group from this page or go back to choose another
group without pressing the 'Back' button.
The official World Cup site
FIFA.com scored top points and was claimed to be a very usable
site. It offers 7 languages maximising the number of fans able to
use the site and includes the languages of the host countries. The
individual team sections provide news, background info and
profiles on star players in an obvious and intuitive manner. It is
also possible to see when each team plays their matches but not
which group they are in. There are also links to the full fixture
list.
So to the final, BBC vs. FIFA...
The Official FIFA World Cup site and the BBCi site have lots of
information about all aspects of the World cup and will be popular
destinations.
But we have to have a British winner so... some people are online!
They think it's all over; it is now... The BBC is awarded the
Usability Cup.
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