Information and junk

JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee, runs a very useful service called JISCmail which enables the academic community to set up, manage and interact with a whole range of email lists. I regularly use it to correspond with the PhD-Design, Computer Arts and many other groups.

Unfortunately, ‘designers’ have recently been at work. A number of useful aspects of the previous site have disappeared, some in direct contravention of established Web practice. For example, it is no longer possible to tell which lists one has recently visited because the differential colouring for visited links is suppressed.

The front page has been invaded by an enormous graphic, 710x400 pixels, occupying more than one third of the available area in a typical browser view. This periodically changes, creating visual distraction while delivering a minute amount of useful information about other JISC services.

The JISCmail page with disastrous giant graphic.

Sanity restored: the same page after blocking graphics in the browser options.

There is no visible option to turn off graphics – it is necessary to dig around in the preferences of the browser in order to suppress them for this site.

Designers (I speak as one) can be the enemy of usability.