I chose two websites to compare that both serve as community calendars in their respective areas. These types of sites are an important part of creating community involvement and the promotion of small events and organization that don’t have the resources for traditional advertising. The example of a poorly designed site is Worcester’s Social Web and on the other end of the spectrum, Boston’s The Boston Calendar. First off, Social Web looks like it was initially designed back in the late 90’s and hasn’t seen an upgrade since then. It’s not intuitive, it’s clunky, includes irrelevant information like birthdays, and doesn’t give you much information at first glance. Actually, it’s just plain ugly – there was zero thought put into the color scheme and that adds to its dated look. It requires to user to click on each event link in order to get even the most basic details if the user doesn’t include them themselves within the title’s link. Lastly, Social Web requires an account in order for it to be used and to communicate with others.
The Boston Calendar, on the other hand, offers a clean list that offers uniform details such as the name of the event, when it takes place and where it is taking place. They also offer a customized list of tags and filters so that visitors can direct themselves to events that meet their specific interests. They even include a google map in their side bar to pin point the proximity in which the events are taking place. Each link opens up to a detailed description that shows that a lot of effort has been put into each entry. Alos, the color scheme is clean, uncomplicated and inviting. If I had an option as to which page design I’d like to see implemented in a uniform way across similar types of sites, it would have to The Boston Calendar.