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Site Architecture
- 21 February 2008
Noah received the following message today — which we thought as indicative of why we are planning a redesign. I’ve posted my response as a comment.
David
—
Good morning, Noah
Since you are the one name I know in association with the College website, you are the one to whom I want to give some feedback—hoping that it will reach the ears of whomever is the “right” person.
Over the years I have spent a lot of time visiting college websites, trying to find various department and faculty information. From these searches, I have come to know what makes a site “friendly” and useful from the start. Alas, our own site fails in that regard.
This morning I tried to find out some specific department information on our site because my own computer (with all my information) is out being repaired, and the information in the printed directory is many years out of date. So I started at the top page, clicked on Academics, hoping to find a list of department names. Not there.
Then I clicked on College of Arts & Sciences, again hoping to find a list of departments. Not there.
This is definitely not “user friendly” and I’m looking from the inside! If I were a secretary at another school who was looking for department information, specifically the name and email address of a department secretary, how am I supposed to find it? When I DO get to a department site (Graduate School of Education) I’m offered a Faculty button, but there’s no Faculty & Staff button.
Many other schools offer department listings right up front, no need to keep digging and digging. On top of that, when I actually did reach one of the departments I wanted, I still couldn’t find out the staffing information, only faculty. This is not good.
At what point do the individual departments control what’s visible/available, and what is determined by a different administrative body? Also, at the uppermost levels (in terms of layers of web pages) who decided that the department listings would be so impossible to find?
Is any of this making sense? Do you understand what is making me so frustrated with our own site?
With great sincerity and a desire to help,
Charlene [Walker]
Filed Under
Comments
Charlene,
Noah passed your email on to me, as your concerns are incredibly timely. (And thank you for taking the time to email, as constructive criticism is helpful at any time.) We are in the final stages of selecting a consultant to help us sort out a number of issues with the website, but in particular, exactly the issue you raise — that some content is either hard to find or seems mis-categorized, or that some might not exist at all.
While we have not finalized the details, we are hoping to have the consultants on campus during the week after next (first full week of March). [Note: we’ve pushed this back to the third week to give both us and the consultant more time to prepare.] They will have some meetings with the administration, but also a good deal of open time when anyone and everyone can come, meet them, and talk about the issues that they feel are important.
Please be on the lookout for an announcement about this (by email and our redesign blog:
In the mean time, may I post your email to our redesign blog? I’m using the blog to chronicle the entire experience and all the issues raised.
Thanks,
David