Preliminary Web designs reviewed
The university's Web Advisory Committee reviewed and gave initial feedback on seven design treatments and a general navigational structure for the new NC State Web presence at a meeting on August 10. The designs also were reviewed by a number of communications staff from across the university, several college-based recruitment staff, and two members of the university's Marketing Committee. The designs were presented by Ripple Effects Interactive, a Pittsburgh company that is assisting the Web Committee in the site rebuild. Ripple is currently working with Carnegie Mellon University and has also designed Web sites at Wake Forest, Vanderbilt and many other colleges and businesses.
A key goal for the designs was to convey the concept of action and to show NC State as "Leading through Action". Through the use of photographs, text and graphic elements including video, the designs showed the many facets of life on the NC State campus and conveyed a strong sense of participation by faculty, staff and students. Committee members offered a number of suggestions for revising these designs including making the news wire more prominent, ensuring that key messages are broad enough to encompass all audiences, especially graduate students, faculty and alumni; showcase the local Raleigh community; more use of factoids, and images that show people involved in activities on campus.
The preliminary designs will now be revised and the new designs will be tested with several focus groups of current students, prospective students, faculty, staff and alumni. Technology issues also will be examined in the coming weeks. y mid-September, after a second round of revisions based on focus-group testing, a set of designs will be shared with the campus community for additional feedback and testing, while more than 100 pages of new content is written for the important second tier of pages within the main web site.The goal is to have a beta test site online by November.
11 Comments:
I'm not sure exactly what was meant when you stated that there would be more use of video, but please do not bog the site down with video and flash that runs automatically. Not only are automatically running videos annoying, but the use of them will alienate those with machines that can't handle the site very well and slow load times.
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I would like to reiterate what another comment said: do not bog down the main site or 2nd tier sites. Flash/video is not necessary. The redesign should focus on making the information more accessible and a more logical arrangment while keeping a modern look. In particular the calendar needs to be easier to navigate to and there should be different calendars for students, staff, ncsu wide, and sports.
"The preliminary designs will now be revised and the new designs will be tested with several focus groups of current students, prospective students, faculty, staff and alumni."
I notice that none of those focus groups are usability testing groups. I strongly recommend that one of the many disabled beta testing groups be included in the process.
The redesign should play nice with screen readers and other such usability software.
please consider a wide (950px) layout in the design.
tim wright
web developer
nc state
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/cadence/
The home page should be simple/elegant. You have less than one second for someone to make a determination on the usefulness of the page. Visual overload are video introductions aren't useful, just annoyances.
Where is the calendar? If the NCSU calendar is to be successful, it must be accessible via the University's front page.
I think #2 is the most readable and visually easy to work from. As an employee, I don't like #1 or #3. #3 is too "touchy-feely" for an institution of higher education. Telling "your story" is not very professional. If you wanted to provide this option at the Visitor web page, then maybe that would be appropriate, but not for the majority of users.
One post stated that you should not bog the main site down with a lot fo flash and video. I agree. With other sites that I visit frequently, I immediately skip the video loads and flash intros. They are prohibitive; they keep me from getting to the pertinent information I seek. If you have an external and internal load page you can address the issues of the anonymous poster who was concerned about the professionalism of a "Your Story" option. This feature, however, will go over well with current students and recent graduates who enjoy the customization features of web sites. That being said, my preference is almost always for a clean cut design of simple elegance. Keep the drilling down to a minimum. The fewer clicks the better. High demand options should have high visibility, i.e. calendar feature, directory, NCSU news should be readily accessible from the home page, as should important student options like Registration and/or PackTracks.
I think that #2 is the most professional of the three. I look at many university websites and #2 is definitely more similar to the best I've seen. It is stronger in terms of being "serious" but also having some nice photos/graphics...a HUGE improvement over what we have now!
I LOVE the first option: Action. In one word it says everything about NC State. It is very visually grabs your attention immediately and is something I think will stick with the viewers. Also, with having a news article as the main image it reminds everyone that NC State is not just a place on Hillsborough St, but a campus that is very active in research, fundraising, etc. As long as the information is arranged in a way that it is very easy to navigate, I think this is the best option.
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