Re: IKE SURVIVORS WANT PHONE NUMBERS, NOT ONLY WEBSITES FOR DISASTER RELIEF

With so many phones equipped to browse mobile web services, and so many short memorable URLs being spread in the media, it's a reasonable demand by the public to have a choice of voice or web interfaces to make their request or report or look up critical information (like when power outages are expected to end).  The more effectively one can associate one with the other the better.  For instance it would be worthwhile to associate phone numbers closely with web services using URL mapping, e.g. tinyurl.com/18005551212 or fema.gov/8885551515 or fema.gov/18885551515 should give you a web form that does exactly the same thing as calling those phone numbers would do.  It's a bit complicated by toll-free number areas not being universal, but it's not that likely that multiple regions would be in need of service all at once.

Of course descriptive URLs are mandatory in any competent public outreach these days (though there is quite a bit of totally incompetent URL mapping) so you need things like fema.gov/ike and fema.gov/relief and fema.gov/houston and fema.gov/TX to work as well.  In fact any term after the / that isn't specifically mapped to a specific page must trigger a search.  I'd go so far as to fire any web designer who returns a visible 404 to the user, there should be zero tolerance for this in emergencies - it's not even tolerable in non-emergencies.  Take the mess they give you and figure out what they're looking for, that's the rule in info design.

Looking at the web presence of a lot of emergency agencies you'd think "Brownie" was in there somewhere doing a "heckuva job".  They're a mess.  Probably major personnel shakeups will be required to fix some of them.

Craig Hubley

Received on Sunday, 14 September 2008 15:49:35 UTC