China.com: Showing the big picture

An image gallery presentation kills the two birds of usability and usefulness with one stone.

The Site

China.com provides online entertainments, internet services and mobile value-added services for the Chinese market from its base in Hong Kong. Its Newsroom has a Photo Gallery with images related to several company-related events.

Each event has its own page on which up to six thumbnail black-and-white photos are shown in a column on the right. One of these is featured as an enlarged colour image in the main picture frame to the left below a caption describing the event. Mousing over any of the thumbnail photos turns it from black-and white to colour, while clicking on it causes it to replace the featured main image. There is no index of events covered in the gallery, and the image initially shown is not highlighted in the thumbnail strip.

The Takeaway

Photo galleries and libraries are more often than not among the least attractive and organised parts of a website, especially for the main users of the media or press centres in which they are invariably housed. Even in those with an archive or subject index, viewing and selection from sets of thumbnail images – the equivalent of a photographer’s contacts sheet – is cumbersome and time-consuming: click, enlarge, back to index and so on.

China.com’s gallery presentation kills the two birds of usability and usefulness with one stone. First, it increases usability by presenting the ‘contacts’ and enlargements together on the screen so that users can quickly and easily sample the selection. Second, by focusing each set of images on an event it increases the usefulness of the gallery to the press, and news journalists in particular.

It is, however, still a couple of refinements short of realising its full potential. The lack of an index means users have to click a forward/back arrow to view the collection, while the relationship between the thumbnails and image selection needs explaining (highlighting the thumbnail that is on display when the page opens might be sufficient).

First published on 19 July, 2005