ACLU

ACLU website

Intended Audience
The initial audience is members of the ACLU or those who might be interested in joining. It is also targeted at anyone interested in US politics, specifically information about civil liberties and court cases and legislation regarding them. The site includes information both about what civil liberties issues are currently before the court or in legislation as well as information on past years. They have an area that is primarily aimed at young students (an online comic among other things). They have a limited area in Spanish.

Usefulness of Content
The site is very thorough and covers a huge variety of issues and provides easy access to specific areas of interest. They have current stories (that change regularly on the front page) but also allow users to dig deeply into a specific area of interest. A User can also look at information by branch of government (Supreme Court, Legislative) and find information about current and past issues involving them. A user can look up news about issues in specific states. There is both audio and video (interviews, etc) on the site. Information about the organization (how to join, how to contact regional chapters) is also available. Basically, anything you want to know at a federal or state level on civil rights is readily available. All in all, the site seems to provide information on all aspects of civil liberties in the United States.

Consistency of design
The site maintains a very consistant design throughout. It uses a variety of shades of red, white and blue as its color scheme (to mesh with its US/political message). The red (aggressive) color is primarily limited to the logo bar or items meant to draw your attention. Different sections might use a different color/photo in the logo bar) across the top of each page but all use the primary logo and same dimensions. Blues are primarily used for menus and white is used as a background for content. There are some specific areas where this does not hold true, such as the area targeted at youngsters which is obviously of a very different design for a different target audience.

Ease of navigation
I found the site extremely easy to navigate and locate information. The primary strategy they have used is a top menu bar which has very frequently used links (Supreme Court, Legislation, About the ACLU, Current Actions, Donations, News) and a bottom of the page link bar with common but less frequent links (links to local state information, congressional voting data, audio/video, forums, publications, store). These two bars reamin part of vitually every page as you scroll thru the site. The site also uses a left menu with more graphical buttons and links that are more immediate and meant to grab attention and for information on joining the ACLU. What is in that bar can vary depending on what part of the site you are on. There is a 4th menu on the right for jumping to specific areas of interest (Free Speech, Privacy & Technology, Voting Rights, etc) and this menu can also vary depending on the section of the site. The center of the page is used for content/stories/links.

All in all I find the site easy to use. One small criticism... on the left menu there is a link to a spanish (En Espanol) portion of the site. The menus remain in english, only the content is spanish, and sometimes you can find pages that might have content that was not translated (like a linked document where the instructions to download are in English).