The appropriateness of Swedish municipality web site designs

Abstract

In this paper, the results of a front-page genre analysis of 290 Swedish municipality Web sites are presented, and the appropriateness of the identified design solutions are discussed. Seven municipality Web site genres are identified: notice-board, newspaper, brochure, promotion, commercial, portal, and filter. We discuss how the municipality genres are related to each other, and to other genres, as mix-genres or subgenres. We conclude that the genres differ widely in terms of form, dominating content, action possibilities, purposes, and user groups and roles. This paper provides design examples of what qualities the different genres might bring, and thereby, gives an opportunity for designers and procurers to learn from previous designs. The paper contributes both by providing an analysis of a genre central to society, and by showing how a genre analysis reveals implicit values regarding the user and the task, mediated in the genres of municipality Web sites.

Categorising YouTube

“…Drawing on the pragmatic approach, Shepherd and Watters (1999) emphasise, in their investigation of websites, the functionality of the medium, where "functionality refers to capabilities available in the new medium" (p. 1), i.e., how to interact with genre. This is useful in a genre analysis of websites as exemplified by Eliason and Lundberg (2006). Their analysis examines genre and active interaction among users.…”