Welcome to the redesign blog.
NC State is redesigning its home page and top-level group of university pages. Chancellor Oblinger has appointed a university-wide committee to evaluate, plan and redesign the www.ncsu.edu homepage and a number of the top-tier sub-pages linked to the homepage. This blog has been done to help anyone interested in keep track of the project the ability to do so, and to provide feedback.
The goal of the project is to improve the usability, content and physical appearance of the “core” Website for the university. The ncsu.edu homepage averages nearly 3 million hits per month and represents an important opportunity to communicate NC State’s strengths and to offer accessible information to a variety of audiences.
Our hope is to develop an improved site that will offer additional dynamic content for both the ncsu.edu home page and an assortment of sub-tier pages, and use emerging technologies to make the site reflect the character of NC State as a leader in teaching, research and public service. A key goal of the project also will be to ensure that visitors can find the information they need when visiting the Website.
The Web Advisory Committee, composed of faculty, staff, students and alumni, will actively seek input and feedback from the university community throughout the redesign project. Prototypes of the possible page designs will be posted for comment and usability testing will be done throughout the process, which is expected to take at least six months. The committee will frequently report to the campus community regarding progress on site, analysis statistics, usability research and opinions about the current and future site plans.
This blog will be moderated by Web committee members. Your feedback and comments are encouraged. Comments may be edited to ensure clarity, relevance and appropriateness.
12 Comments:
Is there a spot where a virtual tour or at least pictures can be viewed of all areas of the campus by prospective students and/or past alumni?
Expectation
Reviewing peer university sites that could be models for NC States web site two of the sites set the viewer up for EXPECTATIONS that were not full filled.
1) Ohio State: feeding Africa program, when I clicked on this picture I expected a viedo to start.
2) USC: Picture of Professor Sugar, when I clicked the professor I expected a video to start.
3) Univeristy of Virginia: The pictures are not linked to some other information.
4) Princeton University: The picture of University Staff does not lead me to expect a video.
The home page should have larger pictures that transition in and out. The Latest News should be presented lower on the screen to the right or not at all. The Latest News font looks cheap--get a nice, slick font. The use of capitalized links gets a little tiresome, too--maybe only the top title bar links should have that and change the others to mixed case. Break up the long lists of links with group boxes with headings, lines, or 3D surfaces, or something.
Looks good to me. Maybe a few details abut the history of our great university.
Contrary to what Andy Butler stated, Latest News needs somewhere noticeable on the home page, or it won't be seen at all. I have a website with a calendar and news/activites one level down and it does not get much attention. Just make sure Latest News has a variety of items for different groups- especially students, parents and visitors. Its nice to share our research, but special events for students should be there too (Open House, Career Fair, Law School Fair, Und. Research Symposium,etc.)
The front page for the site should be considered a disposable item. If you are spending more than two days on it, you are wasting your time. It should be assumed that it can be, and should be, changed periodlcally (at least every 6 months). The second tier is what needs the most effort. It is nothing but cognitive noise as it is now. I am using every available channel given to me to promote the following idea:
students.ncsu.edu
faculty.ncsu.edu
staff.ncsu.edu
visitors.ncsu.edu
While we cannot truly understand and antcipate fully our audiences needs, it is useful to think in terms of overarching demographics. Guiding users forward to a conclusion is allowing the user to construct a meaningful narrative to help them along. This is a start, by setting context for the information.
I can be more specific if that would help.
--hal
Regarding the current www.ncsu.edu webpage:
Most of the fonts currently used are visually appealing. However, I would like to be able to make the text larger or smaller as needed for all the links, not just the Latest News Items.
I would also prefer that Times New Roman not be used anywhere... for some reason, I find that font very difficult to read on my monitor and it tires my eyes very quickly. Arial, Verdana and Tahoma are sans serif variations that are usually pretty easy to read.
Thanks for posting minutes of your meetings. I am the College of Engineering Web Coordinator, and I'm in the middle of our own redesign to enhance the accessibility and communication of our pages. I will be interested in your conclusions and the information and graphic designs you choose. Colleges and departments will need to interface with what the university puts in place. Big job. Good luck! Ellen McDaniel
Thanks for posting minutes of your meetings. I am the College of Engineering Web Coordinator, and I'm in the middle of our own redesign to enhance the accessibility and communication of our pages. I will be interested in your conclusions and the information and graphic designs you choose. Colleges and departments will need to interface with what the university puts in place. Big job. Good luck! Ellen McDaniel
This is an opportunity to completely rethink how the home page serves as a front door to student services. I suppose any future portal product will serve in that capacity, but in the meantime, we should carefully consider navigation and content from a student services perspective. I assume the survey may tease out some information on that front, but more data might be needed. I hope this overall effort is more than just an aesthetic improvement.
Hello,
I am very excited that there is work underway to improve NCSU's site. I am writing this as a way to support those working on this.
Because I wasn't very clear in my last posting (I think the term "wasting your time" was poorly chosen, without additional context), let me take a moment to set this down.
I am suggesting that the front page of the site be quite simple. It acts as a frontspiece, a cover on a book, for the rest of the site. For the majority of our audience, they may only see it once in a while. Students, for instance, will rather go to:
students.ncsu.edu
or it could be
www.ncsu.edu/students
which is a *real* front page, but focused on students. We could of course do the same for faculty, staff, and visitors. Each site would be tailored to the audience, down to the way the content is structured.
I think the first example (students.ncsu.edu) is vastly preferable. It has recognition. It is memorable. That helps make it useful for people.
This also does a lot for us:
1. We can focus on tuning presentation to what we believe specific audiences need.
2. It defuses the concerns about what exactly should be on the main page. The main page is just an entranceway, perhaps a rolling newsfeed, good looking photographs and imagery. It's a nice front door on a handsome house. We are now free to change it with the seasons. Change it at homecoming. Change it when something special happens. I think people will appreciate that.
3. The second tier now becomes something different. It does not reflect a view of our organization, but anticipates what people need. It is sort of what our front page was, but much better, broken into specifc areas based on what we think an audience would want. If we can direct someone 70 - 80% of the time to the right place within two links, from their main site, this would be a wonderful improvement.
What we are struggling with is the very thing that companies who interface with customers struggled with. Some web sites try to do it all (investors!, customers!, employees!), but the really successful ones guide people quickly to areas that are of interest to them. We can all think of examples of that, Apple's tabbed interface that takes users to specific areas quickly, HP's guiding users to information, effecively hiding the fact that HP is very, very diverse. The best stuff is always deceptively simple, but of course you all know that.
I hope that this makes things a little more clear, and a little less caustic sounding.
Let me know if I can help.
Good luck,
--hal
why are you re-inventing the wheel? Jacob Neilson, Ben Schneiderman and Jarod Spool have said all there is to say about web design! Just put the information in to a big pot, crunch it, identify who your users are, design some pages for the different user groups and just DO IT!
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