The City of Baltimore Police Department
The Baltimore Police Department is one of the largest municipal police forces in the US, and its website is the most user-friendly and visually appealing out of the three websites analyzed (About Us, 2014, para. 1). The website has a navigation bar on top, which provides access to pages such as About Us, News, Contact Us, and others. The navigation is two-step: if the visitor clicks on Contact Us, a sub-menu appears with links to Email Directory, Facebook Updates, Email Alerts, and other relevant pages. There is a search bar on top of the page, which helps to quickly find information buried under the two-step navigation bar. There is a hamburger icon next to the search bar which opens a menu with links to the official City of Baltimore website.
On the front page, there is a row of colorful buttons that let the visitor instantly file or request a police report, provide feedback, access frequently asked questions, or contact their district. Color is used to help focus the viewer’s attention on these elements and makes it easy for visitors to get assistance (Cannon, 2012, para. 11). Below these buttons, there are links to social media accounts. The Baltimore Police Department chooses clean, readable fonts which are of adequate size, and the icons are fairly big and accurately represent their purpose. All in all, the website is well-designed, and the choice of fonts, colors, and icons pose no difficulties for people with a poor vision on the desktop. Although the website provides a lot of information, the simple two-step navigation, and clean design makes it easy to navigate. Some of the essential information, such as the department’s address and emergency and non-emergency phone numbers is duplicated at the bottom of the page.
The Baltimore Police Department website is available in six different languages courtesy of Google Translate. Although this fact does make the website more victim-friendly, the quality of the automatic translation is sub-par. When the visitor attempts to change the language, a pop-up appears with a disclaimer that the translation may not be accurate. In addition, certain buttons with rendered text are not translated at all. In order to serve visitors who speak different languages better, all buttons on the website should be translated in accordance with the selected language.
The website has a mobile version, which loads fast and retains most of the functionality of the website. The mobile version generally scales down well, but some compromises are evident, and certain areas need improvement. The navigation bar is collapsed on mobile, thus adding another hamburger icon next to the one with links to the official City of Baltimore website. Two identical icons create ambiguity, and it might have been a better solution to put the links to the official City of Baltimore website at the bottom of the page. The buttons that let the visitor instantly file or request a police report, provide feedback, etc. have pre-rendered text which is tiny on mobile. The icons could be removed, and bigger text could be used on mobile instead.
Overall, in both content and technical aspects the Baltimore Police Department website is able to provide relevant information to the victims of crime and offers useful services such as the ability to file a report online.
The Anne Arundel County Police Department
The Anne Arundel County Police Department website provides information for both the victims of crime and those seeking job opportunities. In addition, it offers such functionality as filing a report online. The layout of the website does not make it easy for the visitors to do that, however. Upon loading the website, the visitor is presented with a plethora of choices: there is a navigation sidebar on the left, a navigation bar on the top with a search bar, and another sidebar on the right with links to Online Crime Reporting and Police Rules and Regulations. It is not clear why these two links are grouped together, or why are they not in the sidebar on the left. Crime reporting form should be put front and center and color coded, instead of presenting it as a text link together with the link to police regulations.
The sidebar on the left which has links to such pages as About Us, Crime Information, Services and Programs and others. Below the sidebar, some important information, such as the department’s address and a phone number is provided in a very small font. There is no indication whether the number is for emergencies only and the font size might be an obstacle for the elderly or people with poor vision. The information provided on the website is current and the texts are well-written. The font used for texts throughout the site is legible and appropriate imagery is used where necessary. The phone numbers of different districts are provided on the bottom of the front page. On the right, there are the latest social networks posts. Although the website is fairly functional, certain information is missing. There is no FAQ page, and there is no way for the visitors to give feedback. In addition, the website is available in English language only, which is a major barrier for the visitors since 21% of the US population speak languages other than English at home (Ryan, 2013, p. 2). Even automatic translation could significantly improve the site’s accessibility.
The mobile version loads much faster and provides the same functionality as the desktop version. On mobile, both the top navigation bar and the sidebar are collapsed into two “menu” buttons, which creates ambiguity. In addition, the search bar disappears into one of the menus. Online Crime Reporting is moved to the bottom of the page on mobile, making it more difficult to find. These areas are in the need of improvement.
Although the Anne Arundel County Police Department website provides the necessary information for the victims, the website is not very victim-friendly. Such pages as FAQ and feedback page, bigger fonts and the ability to choose different languages could be added to serve victims better.
The City of Bowie Police Department
The Bowie Police Department website aims not only to provide information for the crime victim’s assistance but offers services to prevent crime. There is a navigation bar on the left and the top links are crime prevention and theft from auto prevention tips, followed by crime reports, information wanted and other relevant pages. When the mouse hovers over certain links on the sidebar, a sub-menu appears. This solution helps the visitor to quickly navigate to a specific page. In addition, there is a search bar on top. The Bowie Police Department website is the only website that provides text-to-speech service for all texts. This service greatly improves the accessibility for visually impaired and the elderly.
The website provides a lot of crime prevention tips and information not found on the other two websites, such as ATM safety tips and sex offenders list. The visitors can report suspicious activity or submit a tip about a crime. However, there is no way for the victims to file and print a report. The contact information is presented on the right and includes Twitter handles of the police chief and deputy police chief, emergency, non-emergency and administrative phone numbers, and working hours of the department. The website, however, does not offer the ability to choose a different language, which renders it mostly useless for non-English speaking visitors. Although the design is functional, is looks dated and not professional, especially compared to the other two websites.
The biggest barrier for victims who want to use this department services is the lack of a mobile version. It is a major obstacle since more and more people browse the web on their mobile devices (Gube, 2010, para. 3). When the website is accessed via a mobile device, the same desktop version is shown, the texts are small and illegible; the navigation is a chore due to the inability to open sub-links and small font on the sidebar. The entire website does not fit into the mobile screen, obscuring most of the body of the page. In addition, navigation is slow due to loading speeds on mobile networks and the lack of proper optimization. It would be very difficult for the victim to navigate the website on a mobile device, so a proper mobile-friendly version of the website is necessary.
The Bowie Police Department website has more content and some nice accessibility features. However, the directions are not translated into different languages, and the lack of a mobile version makes navigation a chore. Such important service as the ability to file a report online is missing. These are the areas that should be improved.
References
About Us (2014). Web.
Cannon, T. (2012).An Introduction to Color Theory for Web Designers. Web.
Gube, J. (2010). 8 Tools For Easily Creating a Mobile Version of Your Website. Web.
Ryan, C. (2013). Language Use in the United States: 2011. Web.