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.