rdour@techminds
New Member
Quality of Disney Websites.
Hello,
I realy love Disney and all of the work they do in just about every aspect of their business. But the one that just seems to be lacking the most is their web development team. Here are the issues I have with their website:
1. Most important, misuse of Flash. I really can't stand it when people use Flash as a replacement for HTML and properly coded pages based on w3c standards. Flash is a plugin, it is designed for visual aids. It has been misused by many companies who hire graphics artists only, and not a well formed team of artists and developers. It would also help to throw a business analyst in there somewhere to really keep everyone on track as far as business requirements go. A good project manager would really sum this all up well.
2. Mobile browsers and blind users are going to have nothing but trouble visiting a majority of the site. Very few graphics have "alt tags" and many roll-over graphics are also not labeled properly. Disney usually tries to do the right thing, braille guide books in the parks, descriptive audio for their movies, so why not alternative text in their graphics on all websites? Even Flash can be made accessible, but they just plain skip that step.
3. A lack of paradime. I notice that consistancy in their user experience simply doesn't exist. They obviously didn't have anyone conduct user experience testing or a proper testing metrix developed. They are not working at a professional level with deployment.
4. Content. Simply content. They provide very little compelling content that makes a revisit worth a minute of my time. Look at how much effort they put into their podcasts. They just don't get it. You would think a massive media company would be able to produce a podcast equal or better than those out there already. They have the resources and tallent, but obviously they went on the cheap, cheaper than the hobbiest podcaster. This is just crazy. How about the video podcast offerings, just as bad, way too short. What about useful information about the parks?
5. Why should I have to find a menu for a Disney restaurant on a non-official website? The lack of detailed park information just adds to the stigma that Disney is a family place for little kids. They don't take the opportunity to provide an overload of raw information. They have the best publishing tool ever developed at their fingertips, and all they do is make a handful of web games and Flash animations and call it done. The lack of detail on a Disney website does not reflect the amazing detail put into other areas of the company such as parks and entertainment.
If I was just Joe Shmoe out there looking for a way to plan my first Disney trip, and I didn't know a thing about WDW or Disneyland, I'd think it was not worth the money or time based on those websites. More and more people rely on the web for information. Those same people are not going to google around to find that info, the source itself should have it.
OK, this is a well thought out single complaint about the web development business unit of Disney. The rest of the company, love ya! Keep up the good work, and maybe take a few minutes to learn how to code HTML and java so you can go and take over that worthless web BU.
P.S. Mac users out there, try turning on Voiceover along with the "speak text under the mouse" option in the Voiceover Utility, and try moving your mouse over objects on the Disney sites. You'll learn very quickly what a pain in the @$$ this is for anyone out there trying to use one of the official sites while blind. I also encourage you to play with the full Voiceover software, you've already got it even if you didn't know it.
Ryan
Hello,
I realy love Disney and all of the work they do in just about every aspect of their business. But the one that just seems to be lacking the most is their web development team. Here are the issues I have with their website:
1. Most important, misuse of Flash. I really can't stand it when people use Flash as a replacement for HTML and properly coded pages based on w3c standards. Flash is a plugin, it is designed for visual aids. It has been misused by many companies who hire graphics artists only, and not a well formed team of artists and developers. It would also help to throw a business analyst in there somewhere to really keep everyone on track as far as business requirements go. A good project manager would really sum this all up well.
2. Mobile browsers and blind users are going to have nothing but trouble visiting a majority of the site. Very few graphics have "alt tags" and many roll-over graphics are also not labeled properly. Disney usually tries to do the right thing, braille guide books in the parks, descriptive audio for their movies, so why not alternative text in their graphics on all websites? Even Flash can be made accessible, but they just plain skip that step.
3. A lack of paradime. I notice that consistancy in their user experience simply doesn't exist. They obviously didn't have anyone conduct user experience testing or a proper testing metrix developed. They are not working at a professional level with deployment.
4. Content. Simply content. They provide very little compelling content that makes a revisit worth a minute of my time. Look at how much effort they put into their podcasts. They just don't get it. You would think a massive media company would be able to produce a podcast equal or better than those out there already. They have the resources and tallent, but obviously they went on the cheap, cheaper than the hobbiest podcaster. This is just crazy. How about the video podcast offerings, just as bad, way too short. What about useful information about the parks?
5. Why should I have to find a menu for a Disney restaurant on a non-official website? The lack of detailed park information just adds to the stigma that Disney is a family place for little kids. They don't take the opportunity to provide an overload of raw information. They have the best publishing tool ever developed at their fingertips, and all they do is make a handful of web games and Flash animations and call it done. The lack of detail on a Disney website does not reflect the amazing detail put into other areas of the company such as parks and entertainment.
If I was just Joe Shmoe out there looking for a way to plan my first Disney trip, and I didn't know a thing about WDW or Disneyland, I'd think it was not worth the money or time based on those websites. More and more people rely on the web for information. Those same people are not going to google around to find that info, the source itself should have it.
OK, this is a well thought out single complaint about the web development business unit of Disney. The rest of the company, love ya! Keep up the good work, and maybe take a few minutes to learn how to code HTML and java so you can go and take over that worthless web BU.
P.S. Mac users out there, try turning on Voiceover along with the "speak text under the mouse" option in the Voiceover Utility, and try moving your mouse over objects on the Disney sites. You'll learn very quickly what a pain in the @$$ this is for anyone out there trying to use one of the official sites while blind. I also encourage you to play with the full Voiceover software, you've already got it even if you didn't know it.
Ryan
