[CraigJPerry]

I like the UI design in figure 1. There’s no crap in the way of the data but i don’t feel overwhelmed either. My eyes can scan across sections and it feels natural, theres no firehose effect. I like the thought that’s gone into showing the % vaccinated in the top right. I like the dashed underlines telling me that some explainatory text is available.

I think the page looks inoffensive but is clearly focussed on being informative. I wish more data repositories took care and attention towards how data is represented.

[one-more-minute]

In general the gov.uk website is stellar. Lots of good info, and plenty of thought has gone into making everything clear, accessible and pleasing to the eye. Things generally work in a way that they really don't on most public org websites. The team behind it blog a fair bit about how they've made these things happen.

https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk

The only downside is that they often send you to sites run by other, significantly less competent bodies (looking at you, student loans company).

[jsmith99]

They had an early win getting a effective and consistent UI accross government sites, but digitising the underlying processes is a work in progress. Once you click that beautiful and accessible green submit button, it's not impossible a printer in Swansea whirs to life to print your answers out into the original paper form.

[hunter321]

http://ehmipeach.defra.gov.uk/

>Using the right browser - only use Microsoft Edge PEACH is compatible with Microsoft Edge, but only when Internet Explorer mode is enabled. For guidance on setting up Internet Explorer mode in Edge, follow this link to instructions on the Microsoft Support Page.

Yeah, there's still some way to go.

[samhw]

> it's not impossible a printer in Swansea whirs to life to print your answers out into the original paper form

Speaking of which: my mum went through the form to renew her Oyster card the other day, and, having finally completed it, it generated a PDF form and told her to print it out and take it to the Post Office.

So yeah, there are definitely some Jira tickets still on the left.

[samwillis]

While I almost entirely agree with you, having had to report positive LFT Covid tests and do the subsequent “test and trace” form this week I feel that while the UI and UX is nice the flow of those forms are really quite pore. There are repetitive/redundant questions plus inconsistent and out of date advise. It’s probably more an effect of the difficult moving target of changing rules and advice, but for what is an important government process everyone is coming into contact with I though it would be better. Maybe wishful thinking though.

[cronin101]

I think GOV.UK in general does a very good job of making important information readily available. It’s however extra jarring switching between the clean/efficient style of the online messaging and the underlying public services/offices that are still held together by chewing gum and a fax machine, whenever you have some issue that can only be resolved by persuading a human to stamp some paper (Visas, public records, etc.)

[spaniard89277]

At least you got that. Try Spain, when the tax agency uses behavioral data and puts incentives for tax agents, but you can't get a f*ing appointment for pretty much any service as they use the most stupid appointment system ever, and 90% of the state services are subcontracted to the lowest bidder making everything a PITA to use.

All the fancy tech to get in your pockets. For everything else, go f*k yourself.

[cameronh90]

It was a lot worse a decade ago. The GDS have done a pretty good job of unifying the design language and methodology of disparate government departments, but of course, it is a huge job. It clearly involves just as much cultural and organisational overhaul as it does technology work.

Most recently I found the DVLA license renewal was one of those ugly backwaters (albeit still fully online), but their license check code generator is great.

For real terrible stuff, check out local council websites.

[eggy]

Yes, I thought the same thing in finding it easier on my eyes/quick perception of the site.

I do think the UK and some other countries do a better job of presenting data compared to the CDC.

It's pretty much agreed that the rate of unvaccinated people vs. vaccinated people winding up in hospital beds is several times higher, however, all the CDC data presented is only rates. I want tallies or counts, and I cannot find them. For instance, on Ontario, Candada's site[1], the vaccinated are 74% vs. the unvaccinated's 26% of COVID hospitalizations. Most non-technical people think the hospitalizations of COVID patients is like over 90%. It's because more and more people are vaccinated, even with a lower rate of hospitalizations, the numbers are higher. Also, it's interesting to see on the Ontario site that COVID hospitalizations consist of 56% directly for COVID, and 44% were admitted for other reasons and then tested positive for COVID once hospitalized. The case is more telling for ICU with 81% admitted for COVID, and 19% for other reasons.

I am trying to play with raw data more for refreshing my munging skills than making a point or fodder to add to the COVID noise. I have been coding since 1978, played with neural nets, GAs, and GP in the late 1980s, but I don't code or do data analysis for a living right now (other than buisness strategy reports that require some basic analysis). There's a lot of data out there, and it can get very confusing. I am back to using R/RStudio from a brief stint using Julia/Pluto notebooks and previously using Python/Jupyter notebooks. I even did a toy DSEIR model in J back in April 2020 based on previous work by a couple of people, which I plan on updating to April[2]. I am going to try and do some Lisp work, and I think I will settle on RStudio and Lisp for more genomic/bioinformatic stuff (yes, I know biolisp has been supplanted by python, however, Lisp is having a renaissance in symbolic-related areas of ML again like NLP). BTW, in what language was GPT implemented, not API languages, but what PL(s) was used to create the code - C++, Java, Go?

I may be bad at navigating the CDC website, but I can't seem to get the dataset of numbers of hospitalizations by vaccination status, only rates or pre-filtered data. I do remember downloading raw data that seemed to have it (over 1.8gb, I think), but I can't seem to find it. I'd appreciate a link if anyone has it.

[1] https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations#hospitaliz...

[2] https://github.com/phantomics/april