Survey of India

Unfortunately our Government does not want us to get our hands on their maps. An unwitting accomplice in this decades-old charade has been the Survey of India.

The blue of blue text on the home page is awful. We then have a mystery word on the topo sheet page and two options on the main frame, both if which are not selectable in Chrome, Firefox or IE.

No map for the Delhi Metro?

Going to Gurgaon for a few days in September, so thought I would check to see if the Metro was operational from Sushant Lok, and maybe download a map.

I used Chrome for this, the site works okay on Firefox, but read on...

Shock! Horror! They actively conserve their real estate. The text on the site is unreadable. Eventually after peering at the home page for a while I clicked on Commuters I entered another page (Screenshot 2).





What most people will be looking for, a route map, is hidden away at the bottom. Eventually using Firefox, I got the route map with the cyptic Phase I & II and Phase I (approved)




So if you are looking for a simple route map of the existing routes, look elsewhere :-(

Where to place your log-in buttons

Here is an example from Lonely Planet India's new site Travelwell.in. This screen shot is from Google Chrome Beta and one does see a log-in button shyly appearing at the bottom.

Don't be apologetic, put it up where the user can see it. (In Firefox 3 I have a large bookmarks toolbar and thus I cannot see the log-in box).

As always click on the image for a larger version.

Cheers,

User Testing: Oriental Bank of Commerce

(My apologies but you have to click on the image to view it at a larger size)

User testing is critical to a successful web site. With an increasing number of Indian users online, it's a wonder that Indian companies still do not take their web sites seriously.

After typing in all the details on the Complaint Online form of the Oriental Bank of Commerce using Firefox 3, trying to recover a funds transfer made in 2007, this miserable message is all I got.

(I don't like word verification for comments but have had to enable it because of the vast amounts of spam).