NB: This is a viewpoint by Stuart Lodge, director at RoundTheWorldFlights.
The new UK government travel advice pages from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office were launched this week.
As previously discussed on Tnooz, there are some major presentational changes coming to the world of travel alerts.
Traffic lights
One of the biggest changes is the scrapping of the controversial "Traffic Lights system", replaced by a warning paragraph at the top of the summary.
In tandem with maps (see Egypt below), this summary advice works pretty well. However there may well be an issue with resources as only 14% of countries in the new travel advice system have maps (30 out of 206).
And some of the biggest countries haven’t been included, such as India.
Wheat and chaff
One of the other main changes is the reduction in content on the site; in the words of Richard Bielby the head of the FCO travel unit:
"I’ve managed to cut the length of most of the country travel advice pages by about 40% just by making the text snappier and removing duplication."
Anyone who has ever redesigned a website, especially one that needs to be mobile and tablet friendly(ish) knows, this is hard work.
Filtering the important for the immediate and duplication is difficult.
The Luxemburg problem
One of the real problems with the previous site was the endless scrolling of pages to get to relevant info. As Sara Bowley from the Government Digital Service says:
"One of the biggest challenges was making the design flexible enough so it worked for both 'exciting' countries where there is lots to say and the situation on the ground could change rapidly, alongside the 'quieter' countries such as Luxembourg (sorry Luxembourg, it’s a good thing) which had little information that was rarely updated."
All countries now have a decent new continuity of style and organisation. As Richard Bielby of FCO travel maintains
"The other main presentational changes are the tabs down the left hand side (whereas previously it was one long piece of text)."
Your intrepid correspondent thinks this navigational change may well prove to be the biggest of them all.
How to edit Australia through Govspeak
I always had the impression that it was difficult to edit the old FCO site. The GDS (Government Digital Service) has built a fairly simple CMS (with Govspeak translations on the right!).
Hopefully this will aid speedy updates. Especially for complex and sometime controversial advice - ie. Sabah at the moment.
Report a death online
You can also now report a death online whilst abroad. Considering a lot of overseas deaths of UK citizens are due to old age and illness, this might reduce the burden on grieving families.
The future – location awareness?
Adam Bye, FCO digital transition leader makes a good point about the new site here:
"We will be working to take advantage of the continuous improvements to GOV.UK – for example the planned introduction of location awareness – to enhance our information and services."
Imagine having real-time, on the ground advice pumped through on your mobile via Facebook check-ins or Foursquare (that’s if your phone is still working, of course!).
But, bigger picture: the FCO has got a big shiny new website. If you note any issues (UX or content) leave a comment below and I’ll let them know.
NB: This is a viewpoint by Stuart Lodge, director at RoundTheWorldFlights.