PC New Content Management Project: 2010

Someone mentioned that "using mouseovers to reveal information is problematic on devices without mice, such as mobile phones and tablet devices like iPads. On these devices, this page provides no way to see any descriptive information about the resources."

Does this mean that unless we create mobile versions of our site, mobile users won't be able to use the mouseover drop down menus on PC's new website?

The answer that accessibility really is not a problem for these devices. Proper dropdown menus are created using standard HTML, such as lists (ul) tags. The dropdown effect is usually done using a combination of CSS hover attribute and Javascript as well. This method makes it accessible for screenreaders, assistive devices, and mobile platforms. The NCSU library website uses Drupal. They use device detection to redirect iPods and iPads to the mobile version of their site (m.lib.ncsu.edu). Also take note that they are using mega dropdowns, and the links also work when you click it.

Other websites that don't have a "mobile" version of their site also seem to work fine with the iPad/iPod, such as:

http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/6058-how-do-e-commerce-websites-work-on-the-ipad (these dropdown menus work on iPad)

http://www.foodnetwork.com/ (these dropdown links go to that link's landing page instead of showing the dropdown, because these dropdowns are activated differently)

As you can see, there are different ways to slice the pie, but they do produce accessible sites that work on mobile devices as well.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Alumni Profiles

From Walden:

Name
Degree
Job Title before PC Degree
Current Job Title
How my degree helped me make a larger impact
Biggest benefit of earning a degree at PC

How I Did It
Degree Earned
What I studied
How I paid for it
How long it took
What else I was doing at the same time
when I studies
where I studied
Most challenging part
Best thing my family did to help me
what kept me motivated
highes tpoint
biggest change in my life since getting a degree
my next big challenge

Name
Current Job
Social Change Mission
How I'm making a difference
biggest benefit of my degree
why I chose PC
best advice received from a faculty members
favorite PC moment
words of wisdom

Words of Wisdom: "Succeeding at Walden takes the same thing that succeeding in life takes: organization, discipline, the right tools, and the right attitude."

Faculty Profiles

Question Examples from Walden University
What is the most exciting advancement in your field right now?
What are the benefits of a degree in your field?
What is the main thing you hope students take away from your classes?
What is the greatest lesson your student have taught you?

Could use Faculty of the Year in the profiles.

PC Library Website Redesign

The following websites illustrate some examples of features we like:
NCSU Libraries: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ (Prominent search box, clear distinction between library navigation and college navigation, mouse-over dropdown navigation in library nav. bar)
McIntyre Library UW-Eau Claire: http://www.uwec.edu/Library/index.htm (Prominent search box)
U of A: http://www.library.arizona.edu/ (Prominent search box, mouse-over dropdown navigation in library nav. bar)
James Madison University Libraries: http://www.lib.jmu.edu/ (Prominent search box, Icons for some navigation)
UNC Libraries: http://www.lib.unc.edu/   (Prominent search box, Icons for some navigation)

Librarians Web Survey Responses:
What do you consider the main goal/purpose of our library website?
•   Provide quick/easy look-up for resources: books, articles, ebooks and media.
•   To enhance student learning. This should be the goal of the entire PC website. If we are truly a Learning College, then the entire focus of the PC website should be for learning.
•   To provide instruction on information literacy principles/practices (citing tools, researching how-to guides/tutorials, etc.)
•   To provide services via an online platform (ASK a Librarian, instruction and L122/Conference Room/Campus Vista Room booking, material suggestions, ILL, etc.)
•   To allow for feedback on services/resources.

Why do you think our users come to the library website?
•   I think they come to our page reluctantly, so we need to make it as simple as possible
•   Looking for articles, books...
•   I think the main reason users come to the library's website is to help them complete course-related assignments.
•   To search for research information; To find out about library hours/facility; ASK a Librarian service; To book a room (instructors/faculty); to submit an ILL (not many but some); For citation guides (probably some instruction, too)

What do you like about our current website? (e.g. features, functionality, layout)
•   I like the clean layout and the use of icons.
•   Nothing jumps out to me.
•   I like the way the information formats are delineated. Some instructors provide format requirements (books, articles, etc.) which help the library user know where to go to start their search.
•   I like the Library quick links for details that aren't really a major resource necessarily but that complement or support the research process and/or use of the services the Library provides (Periodicals Title List, Request Forms, DBs by titles/subject, request forms)
•   The top navigational areas seem to hit the main reasons students/faculty might be coming to the web site (as they should): Books, Articles, Research Help, Services, Classes & Instruction.
•   I also like the fact that it isn't too busy - the navigation is clear, the center newsy area is less prominent. It is important to focus on key categories, because if a site is overwhelming with content (the main page especially), it can be hard for students to find things (lead to cognitive overload).

What do you dislike about our current website?
•   How restrictive it is
•   Lots of wasted space
•   The picture on the main page takes up lots of good real-estate
•   I dislike not having everything on one screen, I don't want to scroll. I don't like not having mouse over for Research Help, About the Library, etc. I sometimes wish the Quick Links were in alphabetical order.
•   It looks outdated. It takes too many "clicks" to get to information. It's hard to use on a mobile device. The main page has redundant information.
•   Don't like the way prime real estate is taken up by a large photo and the infrastructure of the PC site (the space and layout is too limited).
•   Don't like the way it scrolls and shows the long list in the center of the page based on what navigation is like there once inside the site (or for whatever reason it does it).
•   I think the PC infrastructure takes over the identity of the page. When on the Library site, one should be clear about that. Those tabs at the top leading to all things PC and the PC Library identifier is too small. While I understand the need for a PC presence so all their pages look the same (and students can easily see how to navigate to other key areas of campus), it should be less pronounced. It is important that students when at the Library site have navigation that keeps them there without confusion and that they see clearly it is the Library site.
•   The font is too small.
•   We need a better search mechanism for the site, preferably focusing on the Library web page(s). So, someone looking for citation guides can find them quickly, for example.
What functionality should our website contain?
•   Mouse overs and search on the main page.
•   Why should students have to click around until they can find a search box? We should have a prominent search box (QUICK SEARCH) on our main page to our catalog, our top general article databases, our encyclopedias, etc. We should have a mobile version of our website. We should have an immediate chat box, either through the Ask a Librarian pilot project or provided by PC librarians. Also, we should solicit feedback from our students via our website (Web 2.0). Our site needs to be more focused on learning.
•   We need a better search mechanism for the site, preferably focusing on the Library web page(s). So, someone looking for citation guides can find them quickly, for example.
•   We need a way to see what categories contain without having to commit to clicking on a link.
•   We need a quality one search product to complement our individual resources links (books, articles, etc.).
•   Any service we offer should have an online form supporting it (Reserves, One on One Library appointments, etc.. can't think of everything here but just to jot down the idea).

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Slideout Panels for Viewing/Expanding Content

Slideout Panels can be a useful way to feature additional content on a page without requiring the visitor to navigate to a different page. In short, it is frequently shown initially as a "tab" on a page, but there are unlimited ways of implementing content that "expands". The expansion usually occurs on "click". It could also expand on "hover", but since the content is actually "growing", it would probably be best to occur on a click action, so the user can have a greater expectation that a substantial change will occur. This "expansion" behavior is also seen in advertising, where a flash ad will expand if someone clicks on or hovers over the ad.

Expanding content or panels are a little different than a "lightbox" style popup.

In a lightbox (see lightbox blog), the content usually appears by "floating" in the middle of the screen, and the rest of the screen goes dark around it.

In a slideout panel, the entire panel usually grows by expanding along the top, bottom, or side of the browser window. Depending on the implementation and the page layout, the expanding panel may either overlap the page content, or the panel may "push" the page content out of the way (the "push" method would only work effectively with top or bottom panel placement). Generally, the overlapping style is more common. There is generally no darkening of the surrounding page content when this method is used.
http://web-kreation.com/demos/Sliding_login_panel_jquery/
http://jalbum.macosxsupport.com/

Slideout Panel vertical

Slideout Panel left

In expanding content, the expanding container simply grows its dimensions, usually in an overlapping manner. Again, there is generally no darkening of the surrounding page content when this method is used.
http://demo.tutorialzine.com/2010/04/slideout-context-tips-jquery-css3/demo.html

Expanding content

Essentially, there many ways that JavaScript (and to be more specific, the Jquery library, bundled with Drupal), can be used to modify the display and provide a deeper level of interactivity with the end user. As always, a non-JavaScript alternative should be available for search engines and browsers with JavaScript disabled.

The Jquery plugins homepage should provide a good source of ideas and possibilities.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Lightbox-style Popup Windows Useful for Viewing Thumbnail Content

Lightbox style popup windows may be a good solution for displaying large versions of thumbnail images or video.

For example, a small thumbnail image can be enlarged within a lightbox window, allowing content to be viewed at a larger size without having to navigate away from the page.

Small video thumbnails can also be displayed at full-size without making the visitor watch a tiny video, and without requiring them to visit youtube or another page. This could be one way to display videos on a program's web page if there is only room for a thumbnail size.

Examples:

Lightbox2

Fancybox

Multiple lightbox variants exist. Lightbox2 is arguably most versatile, with support for embedded images, slideshows, videos, web pages, iframes, and more—and has full Drupal integration. Another nice variant include Fancybox (apple-style),

Some live examples and comparisons are:

http://stellapower.net/content/lightbox2

http://videolightbox.com/

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/trailer-for-did-you-hear-about-the-morgans-14365.html

http://planetozh.com/projects/lightbox-clones/

http://drupal.org/node/266126

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Fonts and Typeface

Current Site:
Phoenix College
11px/normal Arial, sans-serif
Titles: Times New Roman 18px Serif

New Site Recommend: Verdana 12px for body (line height 20px has a lot of white space around it)
Titles: Georgia
Example: www.Alistapart.com

RIO:
Link Bar: 14px/Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Self-Serve Title: 20px Arial

Estrella
The whole page Body: Verdana, Tahoma, 'DejaVu Sans', sans-serif

Gateway: Link Bar Verdana 13px (H1) 14px Verdana, sans-serif; (H2) Verdana 12px

AZ Central.com Title: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif

SERIF FONT
Examples of serif fonts are Times New Roman, Georgia, Book Antiqua, Palatino and Garamond. They aren’t heavily used on the web.

Suitable for the Web: Serif (Title): If you’d like to use a serifed font then Georgia is a popular choice. It looks nice, particularly at around 14 pixels.

SANS SERIF
Well-known sans-serif fonts include Helvetica (known as Arial on Windows), Trebuchet MS, Lucida Grande, and the ever-popular Verdana. All of these fonts are clean and will usually work well even at small sizes. Below is an example of text set in Trebuchet MS:

Sans Serif: Verdana — it’s probably the most-used font on the web. Helvetica/Arial and their variations are nice fonts, but are rarely specified as they don’t look quite as cool as Verdana. Trebuchet MS is nice, has similar spacing to Helvetica, and adds a distinctive edge since it is so rarely used.

Slab Serif: Courier New, and Rockwell

Web Fonts compatibility chart (lists Windows/Mac font equivalents):
http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html

Arial
Arial (Verdana)
Arial (Tahoma)
Arial (Trebuchet)

Sunday, August 1, 2010

SKINS AND BACKGROUNDS

Blackboard Skin on the Blog: http://blogs.loyno.edu/students/

Color

002b5e

http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-183.html

http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-161.html

http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-183.html

http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-227.html

http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-276.html

http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-273.html

http://osc4.template-help.com/wt_29648/index.html#

College Websites Using Blue and Gold - some bad and some good. Really like the use of the darker blue with minimal gold (high bright yellow - not the darker mustard) and some lime green accents with a bit of brick

http://www.umich.edu/current.php (just like ours...yuck)

http://www.wvu.edu (not bad)

http://berkeley.edu/students (gold looks bad)

http://www.kent.edu/index.cfm

http://www.edustyle.net/site.php?site=3508

http://www.nd.edu/

*** http://www.coker.edu (blue with white lettering and just a little gold and some light green)

Nice redesign of color: http://www.pdx.edu ( I like the clean white small use of brick in a tab) Look at 2007 preview: http://www.edustyle.net/site.php?site=391

Green and Gold
http://www.msu.edu/ nice gold and the grey has a hint of green to it.

PICTURE TRANSITION IS INTERESTING!

Student Life

Indian East University
Clean, Nicely Laid Out
Good Use of Colors
Minimal but Important Information
Good side navigation Headers and secondary pages
Good use of social media: Flickr
http://www.iue.edu/campuslife/resources/http://www.iue.edu/campuslife/resources/

Sunday, May 23, 2010

COLOR

http://www.deeside.ac.uk/about-us/
Main Colors: Blue (two tones), Gold
Secondary: Purple, Green
Drop Down Menu: Grey with Yellow Headlines

Hillsdale (same color scheme)

Kent State http://www.kent.edu/index.cfm

Athletics

Middlebury (A+)
http://www.middlebury.edu/athletics/
See Scoreboard (right hand column)

Team Photo
Wasn't sure where to put the team photo, since it seems kind of barren to place it on a page all by itself, and where this photo goes wasn't addressed in any of the documentation. Talked with Samantha Ezell, and she said the roster page would be a good place for the team photo, [since the roster is a list of the individuals on a team, so both the team photos, and its players would be shown here, and these both relate to an academic year].
Updated: 8/17/2011

Schedule/Results
Video Link/Feed
In the future, if required, the schedule/results pages (the Drupal content type) could be expanded to include a Video link (Embedded Media Field) so that if a game were videotaped, a direct link to the video for this game could be placed here by pasting in the the YouTube URL.
Photo Link/Feed
Additionally, a Flickr or Smugmug field (Embedded Media Field) could be added to this content type to display photos from a particular game.
Note about Smugmug: Michael Burm takes many pictures of PC Sports, and publishes his work on Smugmug, thus the note about Smugmug as a photo link or feed. Of course, this would need to be discussed ahead of time with Mr. Burm if it were to be considered. http://www.mjbphoto.smugmug.com/
Link Field
A link field could be added in the future, so each game could link to somewhere, such as a news article about the game.

These would be game-specific links and fields, not general links. At this time, it's not needed and would be additional content to manage, but would not be too difficult to set up if athletics wanted to use it at a later time.

Results Column
Samantha Ezell explained that if a game is not played yet (no score entered), the score should be completely blank. If a game HAS been played and the score is tied, this can be called a Draw ("D"). A draw can be 0-0, 1-1, 2-2, or any game where the score is tied, even if it's tied at 0-0. Wins and Losses can be labeled "W" and "L", respectively.
Updated: 8/17/2011

About, Enrollment, Getting Started

Middlebury (Don't love this part of Middlebury)
http://www.middlebury.edu/admissions/start

Admissions:
-Getting Started (Quick Facts, FAQs+)
-

Program Pages

Middlebury (A+)
http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/bio

Academic Programs
Title: Departments and Programs (There are no occupational programs)
Listing: Alpha YES>NO clusters
Photo:Interesting Large Pictures
Courses: Courses Listed - Push Down Menus for Descriptions on each; lists last 4 years and denotes what is current
Contact: Main contact listed clearly in left column open space; all other contacts have large photos, office hours, and can click through to more information
News & Ads: Blocks on left hand side used well for information pertinent

Academics:
Catalog & Curriculum: Departments by Division
http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/catalog/depts

Northland Community & Technical College
http://www.northlandcollege.edu/programs/nursing/program_detail.php?program_code=NUR2

Academic Programs
Title: Career & Technical Programs (or) Liberal Arts & Transfer Programs
Listing: Alpha by Clusters (narrow search by clicking cluster area)
Photo: Academic Landing page has nice photos.

http://www.cerritos.edu/#academics
Cluster Programs

http://www.fresnocitycollege.edu/
Cluster maybe by department as well

http://www.northseattle.edu/programs/proftech/
Cluster in a different way

http://www.scc.spokane.edu/?progsbycat
Career and Technical and Transfer
Category, Subject, or Alpha

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Creative Menu Types

Here are some other Navigation Menu Trends, as published by SmashingMagazine.com.

1) Micro-summary navigation blocks, a trend where a link is more descriptive than a single keyword:

2) Visually appealing icons. Icons intergrated into the menu should be recognizable and not too small. It's not just for decoration. It's there to help clearly convey the message. Some even make use of gradients, bevels and shading along with the icons.

3) Vertical Tabs: Here we are referring to sideways vertical tabs (90°). Text should be readable and the website layout should be able to support the number of tabs you'll need to cover the number of navigation buttons required.

4) Handwriting and illustrations: A handwritten look adds an unmistakable visual interest. As with all designs, the use of it should fit within the theme of the website or page.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Menu Dropdown Types

Single column dropdown:

USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences

Multi-column dropdown:

University of Virginia

Multi-column pushdown:

Boston University

Mega pushdown landing pages:

Media Rich Mega Push Down

Second Tier Navigation

University of Virginia

Single "Quicklinks" (first nav bar) mega full-width dropdown:

CBS.com

Single "Quicklinks: (first column) mega (full-width) pushdown:

Rio Salado College

Mega-Full Width Dropdowns:

NBC.com

Slide-down Tray:

University of Notre Dame

Monday, February 22, 2010

Calendar of Events

Weslyn University http://events.wesleyan.edu

Front Page Calendar of Events Wesleyn

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

HigherEd Webinar: University Websites, Duke University

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Stewart Foss, founder of eduStyle.net, gave a thorough presentation that discussed trends and practices of University and College web sites throughout the United States.

500 college websites were redesigned in 2009, according to eduStyle.net. Key design trends centered around technology, navigation and design.

AJAX and JavaScript frameworks were one of the leading technology trends. Many designs included some type of dropdown, pushdown, or other interactive browser behavior that doesn't involve reloading the page to interact with the site. There has also been a decline in use of Flash, while JavaScript usage has seen a commensurate increase with along with browser capabilities. HTML5 is an emerging standard, and with mobile devices becoming significantly more prominent, and with the iPod and soon to be released iPad (both which do not support Flash), the game is changing for Flash use. Whereas the HTML5 standard supports video tags instead of requiring specialized plug-ins.

There has been some decrease in the prominence of audience-based navigation (Prospective Students, Current Students, Employees, etc.). Some sites have pushed the audience menu into a less prominent position, putting more emphasis on the global navigation for general audiences.

"Popular links" are being used more often. This is not your typical "quick links". This is actually based on analytics or real-time needs, and may change throughout the semester as students' needs change, and as their search patterns change.

Links to social networking has definitely seen an increase. This includes blogs and facebook, integration with remotely hosted Flickr thumbnails, and others sites.

Layout trends included many sites moving toward a fixed-width, center aligned design; and with today's bigger monitors, 950-980 pixel web site widths are common—taking advantage of larger screen real estate.

Big footers, or mega-footers, are also en vogue, and differ vastly from their obscure counterparts of years before.

A couple sites that have really stepped out of the box in design are Washtenaw Community College and Biola University's Undergraduate pages. These are graphically rich sites with hand-drawn illustrations that really give a distinctive appearance. The trend also migrates towards background textures and graphics that have a natural, organic appeal to them.

Large and wide masthead images also populate many home pages. Some even put large photos as a background images to the home page and beyond. In general, the quality and size of photography has improved.

3D elements such as bevels, shadows, gradients and reflections show strong presence in today's educational websites.

All of this, we are reminded, has been presumably decided by each college for their own reasons. Our own audiences and content should drive the reasons for deciding to implement any of these features or trends. Also, our ability to maintain anything that is added to the website is an important consideration. All in all, a very good presentation, and reaffirmed for us the direction we are headed in our redesign.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Ben Riseling of Duke University presented on Wednesday. They underwent a redesign that was completed in October of 2009. They redesigned their primary site in Drupal. The presentation was CMS neutral and focused more on project management and institutional decisions. Their choice in implementing a CMS allows them to generate plenty of content from multiple users, and be able to re-use that throughout the site.

Ben talked about RSS being the magic bullet for content re-use throughout the site, and strong part of mobile content delivery as well.

Their campus alert can be activated easily. They can post an alert to the home page in under 20 seconds, and the home page expands to reveal the alert.

There is no such thing as an "out of the box" solution. Both commercial and open source websites will require customization. They chose an open source CMS because it met their needs.

Duke drafted the functional specs on their own, and just wrote up the RFP for the design portion. They also included a Kill Clause in their contract which could allow them to stop the process at any time if they want to take it over or hand it off to another vendor.

They have 8 news editors, 4 image editors, and 1 event editor. They also have multiple stakeholders contributing subpage content. Some roles have more oversight than others, but all in all, it is working well for them.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Chas Grundy, the Director of Interactive Marketing at Notre-Dame university, presented on Thursday. He has been involved in hundreds of redesigns over the past ten years.

He began by reinforcing the necessity to keep on track with schedule and budget, saying "there's nothing worse than launching your redesign late and over budget only to find it doesn't meet your needs." Common mistakes are:

a weak strategy (and not keeping to it)
poor stakeholder management (not all the right people at key meetings, and too many cooks in the kitchen)
Designing before planning content
No maintenance plan

A successful redesign will have stated and measurable results, a defined strategy upfront, testing-revision-testing-launch, strong content strategy, and continued maintenance and tweaking. Don't assume it's done once it's done.

A highly simplified flowchart of the redesign process is:

Research and strategy
Content planning
Writing and editing - Content into website
Design mockups - Build templates
Testing
Website launch

Usability: Test Early, Test Often. Usability testing can be cheap, fast, and effective. It doesn't have to be a big project. It can cover small things, single wireframes or sketches. It can be done this afternoon. This early and simple testing helps to avoid the "forehead-slappers" that can sometimes be forgotten while intensely planning a site. Test on a whiteboard, or a wireframe, or a piece of paper. Get the feedback. Testing at the end is too late.

Some good usability resources, listed also at bit.ly/usabilitytoolkit, are:

For IA: Optimal Sort, TreeJack
For Design: 5secondtest.com, Silverback, Chalkmark
For A/B Testing: Google website optimizer

Also mentioned was CrazyEgg.com, which creates a heatmap analysis of your page.

It helps so soften the launch, so people know it is coming, and feedback can also be received. Blogs are a great tool for that.

Have a post-launch plan. And instead of needing to redesign every few years. The right time to redesign is when it no longer meets your needs. If you make continuous and incremental changes and improvements to the site, it can stay fresh and not need an overhaul.

Notre-Dame primarily makes mobile content easily accessible through the use of custom-tailored stylesheets for mobile devices. They will be releasing a mobile-only site soon, however.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

DRAFT Student Survey Thoughts

Question #6 - Perhaps we should first ask "Have you ever visited a college website in order to make a decision as to what school you would attend? If yes, then answer the following.

Question #7 - For some reason, the term "faculty biographies" just doesn't seem right. Perhaps "faculty qualifications" or "faculty education", even "faculty background". Don't know why you need two categories, maybe just "Faculty Information" would suffice.

Question #12: Could the parent category be "Parent of Current or Perspective Student"?

I agree with Jim with Question #11. I'd be hard pressed to pick one and even as a design person, I don't see the relevance.

I'm sure you know much more about what kind of data you want to obtain from this survey, so don't take any of this too seriously, OK?

Ken
***************
I think it looks good, Eileen!

I agree about the car question, I would find that hard to answer. But, if
our students seem to like that question then it probably doesn't hurt.

I also like the idea of asking what they like about our website. Or, perhaps
at least a box where they can enter "additional comments" in case they want
to tell us something that we didn't address in our questions.

Thanks,
Michelle
******************

You guys did a great job getting the survey to this point. Here are a few thoughts to fine-tune it.

For question number 4, I think the mid-range option should be "manageable"--I think "somewhat difficult" is more difficult than the mid-range.

For question number 11, I don't get it, and I'm a car guy! I am not sure what we would learn about our website if a student said it was like a Mustang. Perhaps a better holistic question might be...On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate the PC website overall. You could even dovetail that question by asking participants to list two or three school websites that they thought were really well done??

I think a question we are missing in the survey is: /What do you like about our current website?/...just to avoid that whole baby with bath water thing.

I hope this helps.

Jeff
***************
I just did the survey and think there should be one more rating category.

Thanks,
Dale
**************
Students probably don't think about "the review" of a website, but--more to the point--if they put listed a site that stuck out in their minds, that could be useful if we started seeing a pattern. That said, I respect your managing the length of the survey too.

Eileen Archibald wrote:
> Good Points Jeff! I have already heard back from some students that are testing it and you are right on about the question number 4. However they loved the car question (but thought a lead in would be nice) and that was recommended from a consultant to get an idea for design--so basically its a design thing. Lets see what the other students say (that are testing it). Also, Yes yes to the what do you like about our website...I was worried about the length of the survey but it doesn't appear to long when you take it so I do believe we can add more in.
>
> I was thinking about the three school websites that they really liked...and was wondering if they would have a few in mind. I mean how often are they visiting other school websites with "review of the website" in mind. I know we do. Another way to phrase that question that several other colleges have used is : "What websites do you like/visit often? And why?".
*****************
Eileen-
I took the survey, and it looks pretty good to me.
You might consider, on question 4, to have more options rather than just Easy, Somewhat Difficult, Difficult and N/A.
The car question, although unexpected might yield some interesting results. I would certainly like to find out the most popular answers. So I would keep it, but a lead in might prepare you for it.
Somewhat easy seems like the perfect choice to me, having somewhat difficult without it seems somewhat odd to me. That is just my opinion though.
Jacob Clark - student
***************
Car question was a little hard. People might be more likely to answer the car question if you had some examples: Prius, SUV, Camero, Kia, 4-door Sedan
More choices in the rating categories.
--Joe
******************
I liked the car question. I thought about my Toyota Sienna and how comfy it is and roomy. It makes me feel good. Maybe a place to explain why you would choose what you did. If you give them choices leave one blank for their own choice.
--Diana
****************
Everything looks good. I thought the car question was interesting and fun.
--Rebecca
**************
My two cents is that it might be helpful to have the pc web address (www.phoenixcollege.edu) added in parenthesis to any of the questions that refer to it, just in case they close their browser and are feeling very lazy and don't want to scroll clear back to the top of the page. That's assuming that they even look :) --Scott

Sunday, January 31, 2010

News & Events

The USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences has a very nicely designed template with primary top navigation; and standard dropdown menus for second-tier navigation. The second-tier and deeper navigation is displayed on the left menu, but subsection navigation (menu trails) are also highlighted in red to help indicate which section you are—makes it easy to recognize.

USC's News & Events section is nicely arranged with thumbnails, videos, teasers and dates. News item shows a feature at top with larger thumbnail, and lists below with thumbnail.

Virginia Tech also has a very nice left-navigation menu with professional looking, as shows on their University Relations department page.

The Event Calendar is very nicely placed in rightmost column without taking up too much screen space—yet you can click on a date in the mini-calendar, and it loads that day's events below it without reloading the page. When you click on a calendar event, there is a webcal: link to add the event to your personal calendar, plus links to social media (Digg, Facebook, Reddit, and Stumbleupon). The webcal feature is really nice. Every page has an email and print-ready link (which open in a lightbox). (Caution: dropdown links and print-friendly/email should really work with JavaScript off.)

The News articles are tagged by category and free-tags. This means you can click on any tag to see a list of any other articles tagged by the same term. They also feature Top Stories on the right. I wonder what makes them top stories? Number or readers, or author's decision? They also put single large images or even videos in the story. All stories can be browsed via the archives which are sorted by month.

USC also has "In the news" which is short clips where their school is named or somehow involved. Listings are chronological and can browse through the archives. Each item begins with a hyperlink to the referring article—very consistent.

The way this website is constructed and how the CMS taxonomy is implemented, this would be a good model for structuring our news site, as taxonomy and cross-linking has the potential to become fairly complex. This navigation seems fairly natural.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Current Student or Alumni

University of Denver
http://www.du.edu/currentstudents/index.html
EDIT 8/30/11: DU's design has since changed, but the screenshots below show what it used to look like.

Great idea to have people share their story and photo. Could be used for anniversary, current students, or alumni. You can share your story via an email.

When you click on a picture from above this is the type of story it opens up.

Cornell Daily Sun: 161 Faces
http://161faces.cornellsun.com/
Cornell University has shown another great way to display student profiles or stories. Could be used for profiles, yearbook, or alumni. Each picture opens up a brief profile in a 'lightbox'-style popup window.