British Intelligence not so intelligent

I was browsing on the GCHQ website trying to get more information about what they have to offer when I came to a scrolling system which took me a while to get the hang of it. At first I was not sure how it working. I thought an area must had been designated where you move the cursor to move the options. In thinking this I started going around the circle - ipod like (I know it sounds stupid). This didn't work, however it lead me to the conclusion that if I moved the cursor up and down there was some logical movement. After a few minutes I just got bored and thought I'd try later. When I came around to it again today I was much use to it and had got the hang of using it. Whilst going through the site it became apparent that this for a first time user and who don't have patience are likely to go away from the site in a matter of minutes. This would be pretty concerning since this part of the site is meant to provide information for graduates. I always thought that when providing information to users it would she presented in the simplistic way and allow the users to navigate around it easily. 

There are a number of reasons for why this site makes it difficult for the users to view the information and navigate. Most of them were experience by me and will be outlined below.

The movement is erratic. Users are normally use to having scroll bars or something similar to the MAC dock(which enlarges the icon when you scroll over them. This indicates which one you have highlighted.). The way GCHQ have done it is have the movement of the mouse determine the way in which the menus move. So if you move up then the menus move in a clockwise. If you move down then menu options move anti-clockwise. I could not get the hang of it as it either scrolled to fast or to slow. When my mouse cursor reached the end of the screen, the menu options had not been all the way round, so I had to be careful when scrolling up wards that the menu options did not start moving the other way round.

The background of the menu options are kinda see through. This means you can see the options that are in the foreground. This is really distracting and makes it harder for you to focus on the option you would like. It also makes the options look clustered. There is the use of a different colour that shows the user what you are clicking on, but the option is still transparent. 

The fact that this area of the site focuses on obtaining information which is important and useful. It its quite strange to have such a erratic approach. I would have assumed to have something familiar that users would have been comfortable using. 

In some cases the visual aspects can be more eye catching that they cast a shadow on the content. For me this was the case in this situation. I could drawn into the visual aspects

trying to work out what the best approach was try and use this part of the site. I think I must have spent a good few minutes looking over and messing with the scroll, when in fact I should have been reading up on the content. The objective of this part of the site was to help you find out more. I don't believe that it achieved this as well as it should have. To have such a visually appealing site does little to the company. I mean GCHQ is not about effective and state of the art web development or flash development so it would make little sense to use visual and animation to try and outline opportunities. I think such a approach would be best served for companies that are promoting film such as Spider-man 4, Cloverfield and other blockbuster hits. 

I believe that the theme of the "Graduate Opportunities" part of the side is to encourage exploration. The idea is to encourage people to move the cursor around the different parts 

 the side and see the areas they can click on. Example of this is the main page. It shows a laptop with different items around it. There are no label outlining what they might be. There is information just before indicating how to use the interface. However it is only there temporary and relied on you having to remember. If you scroll over the items, information is presented. At least this makes up for the lack of information currently on the screen.  Also an important note is that with there be high emphasis placed on animation, it would be interesting to see how the site would work if running on a lower speed. But then again in this day and age with there being more than 10-million board-band connections in UK[1], there might not be a major issue.

Note for designers: I think the lesson or note to be taken from this is that when designing for users you should take into account what is important the actual content or the way it is presented. In some scenarios the way information is presented takes precedent, however on more occasion it is the content that is precedent. Therefore care should be taken that the approach taken to present the content caters to present the information in the most effective way possible. 

Web site can be viewed on following link: 

http://www.careersinbritishintelligence.co.uk/Default.aspx?ID=4

The section I was discussing is the Graduate Opportunities NEED TO KNOW MORE bit. 

Please go and view it. It would be good to know if other people experienced issues with it or if they even liked it.

[1] BBC News, 2006, BT goes after Broad-band glutton,http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4841132.stm