The document provides a lengthy critique of the Bridges Web-site with 57 points highlighting issues and recommendations for improvement. Key issues identified include: 1) The index/home page does not adequately describe what Bridges is and fails to engage visitors; 2) Important descriptive content is buried on interior pages rather than prominently featured on the index page; 3) Links, headings, and other design elements do not follow standard web conventions and are difficult to see. The critique provides detailed suggestions on how to address these and other issues to better communicate what Bridges does and engage site visitors.

1. Bridges Web-site Critique
©2008 Praxis Communication
http://www.bridgesweb.org/
Bridges’ story is barely described on the index (opening) page—just the
“Engaging students worldwide in direct, interactive learning and story-telling…”
mission statement. You need to have more about what Bridges is and what it
does featured more prominently. That info presently is only found if someone
cares enough to click thru to “About us.” The copy on the About Us/JoinUs/
Workshops page is the single most important page on the site, but it’s buried.
This content needs to be on the index page, because it’s the core description of
what Bridges is all about. Move the content below to the index page and
condense:
“Changing the world one story at a time: Bridges to Understanding provides the tools and training that
enable kids around the world to create and tell stories from their own lives and cultures. These stories are
shared through the BRIDGES website where students can engage each other, ask questions about each
others’ lives and explore each others’ cultures, and through our annual face-to-face exchange, in which
Bridges sponsors international students here in Seattle. Bridges enables middle- and high-school
students in the developed world to connect with their contemporaries in indigenous communities in Peru,
South Africa, India and Guatemala. New communities across the globe are coming online regularly as
Bridges continues to expand. Our Seattle-area teachers are directly supported by Bridges staff and local
volunteers in their classrooms, receive training in our Seattle workshops, and find community and support
in regular meetings with the other local Bridges teachers. Our on-site workshops at schools in Peru, S.
Africa, India and Guatemala, provide training to teachers and students there, and to volunteer mentors
who travel with us. Our Seattle and international teachers work together through their classroom
collaborative projects. Everything comes together in the Bridges Web site, showcasing our shared
learning and knowledge, the digital stories created by the Bridges students.”
“The question that Bridges asks and attempts to address is: What would happen if we gave indigenous
children a voice and connected them to American children on a platform that allowed an equal exchange?
What would happen if we gave children a platform where they can learn directly from and with each other,
not just about each other? And what if that platform allowed them to share and discuss the daunting
issues that face us all: environmental degradation, physical and spiritual poverty and the intolerance that
results from not sharing understanding and not being understood? That is why I started Bridges. Today,
seven years after we began, thousands of youth across six countries are connecting with each other
through school-based online forums, sharing digital stories and meeting face to face through exchanges
throughout the year. I believe we are changing the future of the world child-by-child, community-by-
community.”
1. Index page: the central foto’s perspective is appealing, but it fails to show
what Bridges is really all about.
2. Web surfers expect links to be blue, and your light green links are almost
hidden against the white page background. By not using standard Web
color schemes, you’re losing out on opportunities for click-thru. People
won’t visit interior pages if they miss seeing the links.
3. You only get a few seconds to impress/intrigue/interest the first-time visitor
into staying and exploring further. Right now, you’re wasting that
opportunity.

2. 4. Audiences for the index page: students & teachers; workshop customers
and potential customers; donors and potential donors; journalists. Very little
content directed toward these audiences is evident on the index page.
5. Index page: “What’s New” should be presented in the right- or bottom-
panel, leaving more prime real estate available for explaining what Bridges
is.
6. The index page has an insufficient call to action (CtA), a mere “View latest
digital stories.” Once the index page is reworked to include sufficient
explanatory text, one or more CtA needs to be featured prominently
7. Some will need only links to support features (“Log in,” “Press Center”)
while others should have targeted CtA (“Become a Bridges storyteller,”)
8. Index page: That black bar at the top is the principal design element to
stand out. It’s distracting.
9. Index page: Using light-green type in the “What’s New” bullets makes
for poor visual scan-ability. Replace with standard black font color.
10. Index: Why isn’t this page longer/deeper/wider? The largest block of
text on the page is the “What’s New” column and what’s under it. You’re
missing the single greatest opportunity to engage visitors with Bridges
because you’re only presenting a small amount of descriptive copy.
11. Index: “What’s New”—This shouldn’t look like a blog or an update to
a shareware product. This is an important nonprofit making a critical
difference in the lives of kids around the world. A “What’s New” section
given such prominence suggests you think of yourselves as small-time. If
you use more of the available space on a wider index page, this material
can be put in a margin table.
12. Index: “What’s New”—Don’t use bullets. Bullets suggest text only. These
are links. Use standard blue link color to identify them as links.
13. Index: You need to add a site index.
14. Index: “The Workshop Experience” doesn’t do enough to communicate
what is behind the link. I had no idea it opened a video documentary. Add a
CtA: “View our video documentary about a workshop in India.”
15. Index: “Adobe Partnership” link opens at bottom of Gallery page. Since
Adobe is so important, let’s keep it happy and give Adobe its own page.
Instead of simply the images and their captions, the expanded Adobe page
could include greater detail of how Adobe supported it. (Or, at least, greater
detail about the individual stories if that Adobe support is a meager plot-
line.) Inquiring minds want to know: How does/did Adobe support these
stories. Was it only cash? More? Be specific. Nonprofits, like artists, always
need to sing the praises of their patrons. You’ve got an entire page detail-
ing “Our partnership with Getty Images.” You use the same word—
partnership—to describe your relationship with Adobe, and yet the Adobe
Partnership doesn’t have *any* text! If I were Adobe, I’d conclude we

3. weren’t as important to you as Getty. Oh, wait—I found the explanatory text
—but it’s buried on About Us/Partners/Funders!
16. Index: What’s New—“Bridges digital story, Single Mothers, selected
from 250 entries” leads not to the story, but to the press center page.
Hunh? What gives? Where’s the story I clicked on? Don’t make visitors
jump thru hoops to find what they think they’re getting. Instead of this bait-
and-switch, you need to fulfill the basic contract of a link: It’s supposed to
take you straight there.
17. Index: What’s New--August 6, 2008 - Johannesburg, South Africa:
National Women's Day Commemoration, does NOT lead, as one might
expect, to a news story about the commemoration. Instead, it takes me to
an invitation. Did Phil make a speech? If so, where is the text of his
remarks? If he presented an exhibition, where are the gallery pictures of it?
18. And why is this outdated material still up? This needs to be moved to
a new page titled “Announcements”
19. Index: View latest Digital Stories—You should specify that QuickTime
is required to view them, and include a link for downloading QT.
Additionally, for those visitors who don’t use Macs or QT, consider having
every video on the site available in Windows Media Player format as well.
20. Index: Get rid of the upper-case hedlines (WHAT’S NEW @
BRIDGES). Upper case is not only harder to scan through visually, but it
connotes screaming. If upper case is inappropriate in e-mails or online fora,
then it’s inappropriate here. Upper-case is an amateurish method of
conveying textual emphasis. Use sentence case, color and boldface
instead.
21. Index: You need a Contact Us link on the opening page.
22. About Us: The fotos on these pages are great. However, by not
providing captions for them, you’re losing a wonderful opportunity to
provide more information about Bridges. People look at fotos before they
read text. Use captions to pull people into other parts of the site, or to
reinforce the messages on particular pages. Don’t leave site visitors
wondering about what the fotos represent. They may seem clear to you,
but I can assure you they won’t be clear to everyone!
23. About Us: Who are the students in the foto? Need to provide a caption—
perhaps even a link to their school or their digital story.
24. About Us/Our Program/Mission: This is the info that I expected to find
when I clicked on About Us. Instead, I had to wait to find it from the drop-
down menu. Don’t make visitors jump thru a hoop to get here. Everything
should be at the end of its own link. Redesign the About Us to feature this
page’s info at the end of the About Us link.
25. About Us/Our Program/Mission: “Whom do we serve?” The copy refers to
a page that does not seem to be on the site—and doesn’t have a link to it
anyway. Don’t make visitors hunt! (“See our communities page for a map of

4. our sites around the world, and the schools with which we currently work.”)
A map would be a wonderful visual aid.
26. About Us/Our Program/Model: Who are the kids in the foto? Add a caption
and/or link.
27. Join Us—Donate: This page has too many conflicting elements. You need
to break off the Workshop Registration onto its own separate page.
28. About Us/FAQ: This needs to be reworked. A five-question FAQ is pretty
meager—and the location of your head office shouldn’t even be included!
29. About Us/Team: Phil is listed twice—on Staff/Bridges Legacy and
Board of Directors. If you’re going to include the founder, then burying him
at the bottom of a page most people never look at anyway is not the right
way to emphasize his continuing contributions.
30. About Us/Team: Contact info shouldn’t be here—it should be on the
contact page.
31. About Us/Team: Again, get rid of upper case heds, and change the link
colors to blue—that light green barely stands out at all.
32. About Us/Team: How are the kids in the foto? Provide a caption and a link!
33. About Us/Team/Board: Aha! Captions on a foto!
34. About Us/Team/Advisory Board: You provided bios of the board members,
but only list the members of the advisory board. If I were any of them, I’d
feel slighted. If you’re not going to explain what the advisory board does
and provide at least some details about each member, then having them on
their own separate page is pointless.
35. About Us/Team/Advisory Board: The foto on the Board page (see #30)
showed someone on the board. Are we to infer that the foto on this page
similarly shows someone on the Advisory Board? Who are the people in
the foto?
36. About Us/Team/International Leadership: I have no clue what the page is
about. Who are these people? What do they do in connection with Bridges?
What is the point of listing them if you don’t explain their significance? And
who are the people in the foto?
37. About Us/Partners/Funders: Get rid of the upper case, and change the link
color from light green to standard blue.
38. About Us/Partners/Funders: Is it “Founders” or “Funders”? Did these
organizations and companies have something to do with founding Bridges?
39. About Us/Partners/Funders: “HOPE TO OTHERS & TOM SHADYAC”—
What the heck does this fragment mean? Is this an organization? If so,
where’s the link for it? Does it have something to do with The Kirlin
Foundation?
40. About Us/Partners/Funders: You provide copy outlining what Adobe,
Getty et. al do for Bridges, but the Ambassador companies are merely
listed without any further description. If Microsoft is involved—and you want
to keep it happy—then you should, at a minimum, provide as much copy

5. about what Microsoft does for Bridges as you do for Adobe and Getty. And
what does “Ambassadors” mean, anyway? Is it some sort of special level?
Explain the significance of Ambassadors.
41. About Us/Partners/Funders: If “Other Key Supporters” are so key, then why
don’t they get even a sentence describing how key they are?
42. About Us/Partners/Funders: Top foto—Where’s the link in the caption to
the digital story?
43. About Us/Partners/Schools: You need to identify the cities for each of
these schools, and add links. Stop using upper case.
44. About Us/Partners/Nonprofits: You have only ONE nonprofit supporter?
That appears lame. Until such time as you get more, I’d remove this page.
Besides, you don’t explain at all how the Purpose Prize is involved in
supporting Bridges, and nothing on their own opening page does either.
45. About Us/Join us: If I were the mentor in the foto, I’d feel slighted that I’m
not mentioned by name. Do you mean to suggest that mentors are so
unimportant that they’re interchangeable? Seen one, seen them all?
Mentors are critical components, and they need to receive appropriate
recognition. If he isn’t identified because no one remembers his name, then
don’t use fotos in such situations.
46. About Us/Join us/Volunteer: Finally—firm calls to action! (“Become a
Seattle Area Classroom Mentor,” “Become an International Site Mentor,”
“Learn More at our Monthly Open House”) These CtA should be on the
index page as links because they are some of the most critical things you
want site visitors to do.
47. About Us/Join Us/Workshops: This page duplicates what exists under the
Workshop tab. Get rid of it.
48. About Us/Join Us/Workshops: The FAQ at the bottom contains questions
that aren’t in the Program FAQ. Don’t have individual FAQ pages; combine
them all into one, broken into sections if need be. BTW, the Q in FAQ is for
“questions” (plural), so writing “FAQs” is redundant.
49. About Us/Press Center: Phil’s comments in “Why Bridges?” are significant
and deserve higher prominence with a better link. “Why Bridges” is a weak
link title and doesn’t excite curiosity.
50. About Us/Press Center: FIVE press contacts? If I were a journalist, I’d
wonder which one I should contact. Pick and display a single point of
contact.
51. About Us/Press Center: This section needs separate links for an FAQ and
a backgrounder about Bridges, as well as separate links to bios. Also fotos,
images.
52. About Us/Press Center: “Latest Press Releases” (lose the upper case!)
suggests you have more than one press release—but you only have one.
The other is a media alert. Press releases represent key sources of info for
journalists prowling a site’s press center. If you irritate them by not

6. providing what the subject hed promises, they may just leave instead of
persevering to continue searching. You should never make journalists hunt
for what they want.
53. About Us/Press Center: “01 April 2008: International Bridges students
explore Pike Place Market on April 4 as they create multimedia digital
stories”—this link goes to the Garfield media advisory immediately above.
54. About Us/Press Center: The text of the link to the 10 MAR 2008 press
release should be the release’s title. This is standard in Press Rooms.
55. About Us/Press Center: “Bridges in the News” needs to have the dates of
each publicity clip, just as you do with the press releases.
56. About Us/Press Center: “Bridges in the News” –“Bridges on Peace Talks
Radio” should indicate that the link goes to a text excerpt and not, as one
might assume, to an audio file of the interview. People might be more
inclined to click thru to read the excerpt than to listen thru an entire
interview.
57. About Us/Press Center: “Bridges Events/Coming Soon” features expired
events. Remove them. If you want to archive them, create an Announce-
ments section for historical review of such things.
58. About Us/Press Center: “Coming Soon” features three links to the Human
Rights Watch International Film Festival. However, those links go to
placeholder pages on HRWI’s site. Clicking these links is a waste of time
and the links should be removed.
59. …Besides, I’m more interested in which Bridges stories will be displayed.
Were they “selected by a panel of judges”? Then use that fact to create
third-party validation. Which stories were they? Are they already up on the
site? Why aren’t there links to them here?
60. About Us/Press Center: “Bridges Events/Recent Events”—Both links in the
first item, June 20-21, 2008 - New York, NY, USA: take me to placeholder
pages with no content. This is irritating.
61. About Us/Press Center: “Bridges Events/Recent Events”—The link to
Seeds of Compassion contains no indication of what Seeds of Compassion
has to do with Bridges, and neither does the opening page of the SOC site.
Either provide an explanation of its relevance and why it’s here, or remove
this item.
62. Schools: This section lists Canadian and Israeli schools, but those count-
ries are not listed in the Donate text, which only lists Peru, South Africa,
India and Guatemala. Need to be consistent throughout.
63. Schools/pick any—I clicked on the schools at the bottom of a few pages
expecting to see a digital story or the schools’ own sites. Instead, I discover
that it’s really a login for the school. I wasted my time because the link
wasn’t properly labeled.
64. Schools: Not every school page shows a link to the school. Does that

7. mean the schools don’t have them? However, if they do have sites, this is a
HUGE oversight!
65. Schools/Canada/Linnea: “Stay tuned…”? If you don’t have the content,
then don’t indicate that you don’t have the content. Remove all such
placeholders.
66. Schools/Guatemala: the attribution in the foto caption is incomplete. Holy
who?
67. Schools/Guatemala: The copy describing Colegio San Pedro is almost
nonexistent. Anyone from that school who also reads the larger content of
Fotokids will think Bridges doesn’t really care about Colegio San Pedro.
You need to be consistent and have as much descriptive text about every
school as possible.
68. Schools/Israel/Israel School: This link text should reflect the school’s
name, not its category. Change to “Kesem School.”
69. Schools/Israel/Israel School: Get rid of the coming soon!
70. Schools/Israel/Israel School: The bottom of the page has a purple square
with “Orly Yagodorsky.” This looks amateurish. If this happens to be the
first Schools page a potential donor, workshop customer, teacher or
journalist sees, then you’ve lost an opportunity to impress them.
71. Schools/South Africa: The top graf contains two links to the same further-
info page: “You can work with our amazing Bridges students in South Africa
by joining us this summer on our digital storytelling workshop in Cape
Town. Learn more here.” One is sufficient.
72. Schools/West Bank: Remove the “check back here soon” text.
73. Schools/USA: Some of the schools are partnered with overseas schools.
Aren’t they all? If so, specify which partners on each U.S. school’s page.
74. Schools/USA: Not all these schools’ pages indicate the location of the
school.
75. Schools/USA: For the benefit of international students, specify “the state of
Washington” instead of using the postal code WA. Do the same for all the
rest of the USA schools.
76. Schools/USA/Alderwood: Mousing over the large white space in the middle,
I discovered four invisible squares that have links I can’t open. What gives?
77. Schools/USA/Coe Elementary: If it’s not ready, then don’t display an empty
page! Take down this page until you actually have content.
78. Schools/USA/Garfield: Remove the “Stay tuned…” copy.
79. Schools/USA/Lakeside: For some reason, the link to the school’s site is
nowhere in evidence. Use http://www.lakesideschool.org/
80. Schools/USA/Nathan Hale: This refers to Nathan Hale’s partner school—
but not by name! If I were a student at the partner school, I’d feel slighted.
81. Schools/USA/Salmon Bay: If they created 18 stories, how come this page
only shows four?
82. Schools/USA/Seattle Girls’ School: Doesn’t list their Web site:

8. http://www.seattlegirlsschool.org/
83. …also, where is the descriptive copy at the top of the page about what
projects they’re working on?
84. Schools/USA/Stevenson: Remove the “Check back soon…” text. If you
don’t have anything to show, at least put up a sentence describing what
they’ve begun to work on, or mention their teacher…anything is better than
nothing!
85. Schools/USA/WA middle School: Get rid of the “Check back in the
spring…”
86. Projects: This is a lame title for a tab. Better: “Bridges Initiatives”
87. Projects: This is the section that’s most unsupported, and doesn’t seem to
relate smoothly to the core of your mission. Find a better way to integrate it.
88. Projects/Climate Change: I don’t like having to hunt thru multiple links to
find the entirety of this project. While keeping everything to one screen so
that nothing appears below the fold, as it were, is admirable, in this case
you have lots of info to convey and I have to jump thru multiple hoops
(links) to get a sense of the entire thing. Put it all on one page and keep the
section links above the fold on the first screen.
89. Projects/Face to Face: This is a really interesting aspect of Bridges, but it’s
buried so deeply that most people will miss it. Break it out to its own tab,
and refer to its existence in the body copy of the index page.
90. Projects/Face to Face: Why aren’t there fotos on the site of the visits? You
should show the foreign students interacting with Seattle kids! Oh, wait:
They exist—but on the blog! ?? I don’t want to have to leave the site to see
this sort of stuff. The fotos on the blog are great stuff, and they show real
kids—much better than the more stock-foto-style, generic images you show
to the left of each page on the Bridges site.
91. Projects/Face to Face: You need to identify the subjects in the fotos on all
three pages (2008, 2007, 2006)
92. Projects/Face to Face 2007: “FACE TO FACE 2007 (previousily--should be
“previously”
93. Projects/Face to Face 2007: Many blocks of text here, and not enough
white space breaking them up. OTOH, some widow sentences need to be
reattached to the grafs above them. The 2nd and 3rd grafs look like they
contain hard returns that have broken up the integrity of the paragraph. The
final graf contains three such instances. If they’re meant to be separate
grafs, then separate them with white space. Otherwise, do some
backspacing and get rid of the interior white space in the grafs.
94. Projects/Past Projects/Cultural Portraits: Is this page titled “Cultural
Portraits” or “Our Communities”? One is used in the navigation link, the
other on the page itself.
95. Projects/Past Projects/Cultural Portraits: “Our Communities”—Content is
referred to, and its sections are listed but they aren’t links—so why does

9. this page even exist? If this project was significant enough to be listed on
the site, why isn’t there more about it? Let’s see the finished product!
96. Projects/Past Projects/Cultural Portraits: “Our Communities” -- Note the
incomplete text: “Our goal is to give our students a voice to tell their own
stories and to document their lives and their cultures. [sic] is an ongoing
project in which students from all of the Bridges sites create a vivid picture
of their communities through digital stories.”
97. Projects/Past Projects/Water Made Visible: As with “Our Communities,”
content is referred to by title, but without links visitors can’t get a sense of
what was done.
98. Projects/Past Projects/Games of the World: Although the first two items on
the page have links, “Final Projects” does not.
99. Projects/Past Projects/Games of the World/Curriculum Resources: “Our
students have already created some interesting stories about the games
that they play. Take a look: …” I’d love to, but I can’t—because no links
exist! Five stories seem to be listed, but they’re jumbled together. Use
white space to separate them—and add the links!
100. Gallery: Each image should identify the school and the date created. Lose
the upper case and you’ll have more room for captioning.
101. Workshops/FAQ: Don’t write out “frequently asked questions” in the title
above the body copy—it takes up too much space. FAQ is not so new a
concept that it needs to be spelled out to your visitors. Just use: “Workshop
FAQ”.
102. Workshops/Testimonials: An incredibly important page of wonderful
content, but it’s buried too deep in the site. You should have a sampling of
the best comments on the index page (perhaps even in a scrolling
crawlbox, or replaced with fresh ones on each subsequent return to the
page from interior pages).
103. Workshops/Testimonials: Italics are MUCH too hard to read as regular
body-copy style, and you have way too much of it on this page. Replace all
italics with non-italics.
104. Workshops/Testimonials: You can make this page even stronger by adding
selected fotos of some of the persons providing the testimony—not
standard hed shots, but actual candids showing them on site & at work. Or
you could add a link to a foto next to each person’s comment. Also
consider adding a Gallery link to the digital story that person was involved
with.
105. Workshops/Blogs: People really dig blogs nowadays, but these are buried.
Move them to their own tab, along with the Student Perspective blog. In
contrast to most of your pages’ content, which describe things without
showing them, these blogs are important elements showing real people
doing real stuff.

10. 106. Workshops/Guatemala: The foto is dull. Use fotos that show actual faces.
Remember, you’re in the business of selling services that help children.
107. Workshops/Guatemala/Photographs: Remove the “Check back soon for a
slideshow.”
108. Workshops/Peru/Photographs: Remove the “Check back soon for a
slideshow.”
109. Workshops/South Africa/Photographs: Refers to a slideshow that does not
seem to exist because it is not on the page.
110. Workshops/Workshop Graduates Gallery: I don’t think showing one foto
constitutes an actual “gallery.” The foto is a good one, however, and you
should use more like it elsewhere. Too many of the fotos on the left of the
pages fail to show workshop participants, whether adults or kids.
111. For a model of effective navigation tabs, check out the tabs at the top of
www.treehouse.org. They keep it simple: “Who we are,” “How we change
lives,” “What we do,” “How you can help,” “Contact us,” “News and events.”
112. Notice also that Treehouse’s interior pages are shown as links in a
nav table along the left margin, which is the classic Web-site design that
most people expect. Your design of top-down, scrolling left to right and
down again, is cumbersome by comparison.
113. Your Schools and Workshops tabs contain duplication. Why not just
combine each workshop with each school and only list them once?
114: Here are two organizations doing similar things, which you may want
to work with or link to: Children’s Technology Workshop
www.ctworkshop.com/CTWBM/CTW_BM/Default.aspx and Seattle’s Youth Media
Institute http://youthmediaseattle.org/?page_id=2