www.kcmo.org/kcmo.nsf/web/home?opendocument
The Kansas City, Missouri website is an example of a self-service government site. It offers information about the city and is useful to residents of the city as well as newcomers to the area. Design-
wise, however, the website is lacking in several aspects. To start, the main page is left aligned so there is a vast amount of white space to the right of the main page design. If only that were the biggest design faux pas on the site!
Another thing that immediately jumps out is the list of links under the banner. On the home page, "Employment" and "Mayor/Council" are not in the light blue banner, but rather half under it and thus ghastly misaligned. If you navigate to the "Contact Us" page, all the links along the top of the page are misaligned except for "Contact Us" and "Visitors." The misalignment is not only a visual turn-off, but it also makes the links extremely hard to read because they are located on a shadow line that transfers into a darker blue than the link banner. This next issue is not technically something that is wrong with the site, but rather a personal opinion about ease of use. If you go to another page on the Kansas City website, the link to the home page is on the far right (and down on that line where you can't read it). In a self-service government site, I wouldn't necessarily expect the banner to link back to the home page, though it would be nice and an easy fix, but I also think the home page shouldn't be buried at the right where it is the last thing a viewer sees.
The banner in itself has a lot more potential. The cityscape is classic, so even though it's boring and you can't tell that it's Kansas City, Missouri and it shows nothing about life in Kansas City, it's all right. It's the sun and the gradient that disturb me more than the image choice. The sun is clearly fake and clearly used to highlight "City of Kansas City Missouri," specifically the Kansas City part. There really isn't a reason for the use of the gradient other than it gets the viewer's eye to travel across the banner from light to dark. The "City of" and "Missouri" text is a shade of gray that is close to getting lost in the whiter shades of the gradient. The "Kansas City" text is a shade of blue with what looks to be some bevel and embossing effects, which make some parts darker blue and some parts lighter blue. Perhaps they thought this and the gradient went together...it's a shame they're different shades of blue entirely. In fact, I don't think any, save maybe one or two, shades of blue on this website match.
The box under the banner that displays the date and forecasts is a clashing neon blue. The text inside this box is a mixture of serif and sans serif and the seriffed type, especially, is too tiny to read. If nothing else, I would make the text in the banner sans serif, but increasing the size a bit will only help readability. Mysteriously, under that is a brown line, followed by the light blue box that contains the links, which is inexplicably beveled and embossed. On the left is a small search bar with a list of quick links to important things found on the site, including a site directory. The middle of the page features a section on city news with several articles and links. This section is white and has a cropped upper right corner (as opposed to everything else that is rectangular) and a drop shadow. Under that layer is another rectangular blue layer, also with a drop shadow. On the right section, in another rectangle with a gradient, there are more helpful links. However, these links are not related in topic and I'm not sure why you would put them all in one place. At the top of the column, in brackets, reads "Text Version," which is just another site map like the one at the top of the column on the left side.
There are many other things that could be improved upon within the Kansas City site, but the topics I have covered are the things that I objected to most upon first perusal of the site.
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