2.12.2009

When Bad Design Goes Even Worse

I'm picking on someone in my own backyard today.


We have tickets for an event @ UNC this weekend.
I went online looking for a map to the building.

I find this page (look right).

I click the link indicated to pop-up the map.

And it's horrible. It's little, it's square, it provides no context. So I think, "aha! it's just that no-resize pop-up code. If I save the image, I will see the whole thing."

Bzzt. Wrong.



The content owner (I'm guessing there some sort of system where one person did the pop-up code and someone else reused it, basically b/c I can't see making a non-fitting non-scrolling window for any other reason) cropped the map down so it would fit better into the little pop-up window!

This is the point where, as a designer, I want to start beating my head on the desk.

So, they couldn't get the map to show the right part in the tiny window, so instead of getting a better window or a full page... they just cropped the map down until the one building they needed would actually be seen.

Oh. My. God.

Please stop the insanity!

2 comments:

TonyRoomZ said...

I think the fact you get a 404 when clicking the main Campus Map link on the NAV bar is more annoying :)

Yet Another Girl said...

Oh, there is bad all over the site.

We also discovered that when we went to the event, the building had no parking. They tried to bar us from parking in the disabled slots reserved for other, more special, locations.

Conversely, this site (discovered after much digging) is all that is nerdy joy: http://www.planroom.unc.edu/bldg/detail.asp?id=018