Finally someone took notice of the overly ornamental Korean websites. And that someone isn’t a web designer, but a politician. The article permalink is unavailable but its from the Korea Times.
A lawmaker is seeking to establish legislation requiring the country’s major Internet portal sites to introduce simple Web search services similar to Google.
Rep. Chin Soo-hee of the main opposition Grand National Party said Sunday that she will propose a bill later this month to increase the relevance of Internet query results.
“Local portals put a lot of edited content including advertisements into search results, showing them in categorized section. I think this distorts the objectivity of the services,” Chin said.
“Internet users must be able to search for anything without being disrupted by advertisements or artificial classification,” the first-term assemblywoman said.
And of course the Korean portals defended themselves.
“Korean portal sites have raised competitive edges by creating unique search technologies and Chin is negating such efforts,” said an official at an online company.
“The policy will harm the competitiveness of our portal sites rather than helping it. Even Google’s search results demonstrate keyword ads. Chin should wake up,” said the official, who declined to be named.
However, these officials-who-refused-to-be-identified should get with the program. Google does Adwords as tasteful as it can without the Flash interruptions. Another thing is Google’s ads are clearly designated away from the relevant search results.
Just thought I should throw this BBC article in here: Web 2.0 ‘neglecting good design’ (HT Marmot)
I’m not a Web professional either but here’s my 2 cents worth regarding this. About 6 months ago, I was given charge to re-do the startup’s homepage which was in coincidence for the IPO ((we were later disqualified; reasons unbeknownst to the little people like myself)). Concluding from the initial look over, the general layout and style was chaotic, a severe lack of visual hierarchy ((it was difficult to distinguish which kernel of info had priority over the other)), and most importantly there was an overabundant use of Flash graphics. To cap it off, most of the images had nothing to do with the company nor our products.
After defining the ideal homepage concept including the user flow (sitemap), we called on self-proclaimed “global” local web service companies ranging from USD 30,000 to USD 100,000+. We listened and saw their proposals, still something was missing. Perhaps it was my variation of Korean that is not easily understood by the natives. Or, because my initial RFP presentation was held in English.
It seemed to me after meeting a dozen of so ‘professionals’ they absolutely had no idea was I was talking about. For us to get our money’s worth, I had to communicate the huge gap between my idea versus their proposals. For clarity purposes, I presented a couple of slides headlined, “Order not Chaos.” This time around I immediately got to the point–there was a cultural difference in how Koreans and Americans/Westerners receive and consume visual information.
A couple of slides do the telling:
As a client, I told them minimalism was the killer highlight. The overkill use of colors and heavy Flash animations do not equate to skill nor creativity. I gave them a simple and clear cut guideline: to channel the information (text) so they can be easily captured within the focus of the eye. In other words, to go with a grid layout system.I never got to see the next step. Shortly thereafter the CEO made an announcement that fell short of calling it quits. The company continued to operate albeit on 2 cylinders, all products and projects that were being worked on were shelved, our paychecks put on hold, etc. Anyway that’s another story.