The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) launched its newly redesigned website on Friday, noting that it was the site’s first major overhaul in ten years. According to the board, the new NTSB.gov design aims to modernize the user experience along with improving search tools and site navigation. Changes also include a mobile-friendly design and updated investigation detail pages offering “a plain language summary and links to related report materials for full technical analysis.”
“The NTSB website is one of the agency’s most important tools for communicating to the public about our investigations and safety recommendations to prevent future tragedies and save lives,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “This new website is the result of a lot of hard work and planning to ensure the public has easy access to important safety information.”
The redesign process included looking at analytics data and visitor feedback to better understand how people have been using the website. Based on those findings, content was reorganized with the goal of making the search process more intuitive and information easier to locate. The NTSB says it plans to “keep enhancing the site iteratively.”
I will be interested to hear Paul B’s analysis of how well the new and improved website works.
Well – I will give it this. The accident database (lets face it – the only thing most of us are interested in!) now appears to be searchable in simple human terms and not with an arcane understanding of how the system MIGHT have filed what you are looking for. Every accident I could think of came right up (as long as you are searching post 1983)
I hope this will replace the CAROL system which, for example, required nine steps to search the NTSB data base for accidents concerning an aircraft type and range of dates of accidents. I used to spend time looking at the accident data base which listed accidents by date, starting with the most recent. The capability to access that data base mysteriously evaporated several years ago (with the advent of CAROL?). Later today, I’ll attempt to access the accident data base, hoping that the procedure is now more straight forward.
The NTSB says it plans to “keep enhancing the site iteratively.” This quote from the above article does not fill me with optimism. I even looked up the definition of “iteratively”, but am still not clear on what that sentence means.
“Iteratively” is a term of art in software development, and tech industries more generally (my field). It means to repeat a cycle of: publish (release) a product or site, evaluate it, make a few improvements in a short time, and publish again; frequently, many times. In other words, to “iterate” through the cycle. This is in contrast to accumulating lots of changes into one big update, which takes a long time to appear.
Thanks for that clarification. I’ve done a little bit of looking around the internet and think that I now understand the concept of “enhancing iteratively”. Is it officially known as the Iterative Process? Anyway, I like the concept and think that it should have driven the development of such programs as the F-35, KC-46 etc.
I have to agree with Rick at Aviation Consumer, the new site is basic at best. My take is redesigned by tech and not by people that actually use the site for research. If this is what the NTSB wanted, then they are proponents of the cancel culture, only letting us see what THEY want us to see. I am not happy with the new “cute” site at all. Perfect for a ten year old tho.