Bad governance can mean bad design, Part 1: THE AWFUL

Before anything else.

Didn't I just prophetically write about The Hurt Locker winning and Bigelow as first female director a few days before the Oscars?

It's a gift, y'know.

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I've visited a lot of government websites to date, and I've noticed something peculiar about most of them. It's admirable enough that a government as backward as ours has endeavored to be on the 3Ws for the sake of transparency, modernization and the citizens' right to information. But they should at least be able to exert effort toward aesthetics and usability to show genuine concern.

THE AWFUL

The following are screen caps of indexes of some government sites that are exceptionally terrible in terms of web design and everything else. What's with all the nausea-inducing marquees (scrolling text)? Amateurish Flash animation? And layout circa 1991?

Let's go deep blue sea diving into the Energy Regulation Commission's website. Are those double-double scrolls and primary yellow nav links? Now I feel like drowning.

Introducing old school, Notepad-encoded tables and embossed mud-like banner text. With its tan color scheme and garbled sidebar, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau online is too down to earth that only worms and termites are missing.

Every capital city lurker's favorite government agency, the Metro Manila Development Authority is probably too busy manning the streets and building footbridges to notice that their own website looks worse than rush hour traffic along EDSA.

The Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau launches heroically to put "No Crossing" lines around our forests. Their own website, too, should be protected from visitors with its confusing layout of boxed elements, Powerpoint gradients and rainbow-colored site counter. But they're already probably taking precautions. Notice their title header says "Untitled"?

The grand prize goes to the National Tax Research Center's website, designed by my neighbor's 3-year-old brother who aspires to be a tax attorney someday. While looking at this site, I suddenly wanted to reconsider withdrawing my application for TIN.

Up next: THE AWESOME