redesigning lclark.edu

Noah Kersey

The Confluence of Content Streams (Our Twitter River)

One of the benefits of our redesign process (including the modernization of the technological underpinnings of the site), is that we look forward to being able to reuse content in new ways across our site. This is not a radically new concept on the web in general, but for Lewis & Clark it is a change that offers exciting opportunities for an improved user experience.

In the old days, interesting stories that were told one place, say the newsroom, had to be manually added anywhere else we thought might be worthwhile, like an academic department’s news page, and vice versa. If you wanted to read those stories you were pretty much limited to using one device, the web browser and accessing it one place, the static web page. With the rise of some pretty heavy acronym-laden technologies, RSS chief among them, the PubCom team is using the redesign to play with some new ways to deliver the fascinating as well as the day-to-day goings-on of the members of the Lewis & Clark community, both on and off Palatine Hill. Recently we have hopped onto bandwagon that is Twitter (Twitter Explained in Plain English) and are experimenting with directing some of our varied content streams, of Watzek Library news, of Law School podcasts, of our Newsroom, as well as items that come to us from the outside world, like google news alerts, into a united content river. At this point you can access it on our twitter page from your web browser, mobile phone, or via our new service, telepathic broadcast, (still in beta). Advantages: we set the stage for serendipity, practice brevity, and offer a less formal venue to let people know what L&C is doing as an institution. Our approach will invariably change as we learn more, and if you find yourself asking your computer monitor “Why?” out loud as you read this, drop us a line in the comments. We like to talk about this stuff.

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Other HigherEd websites

It can be interesting to see how others in higher ed are doing things on the web, since the challenges campus web designers face are similar on many levels. One site that is a central hub for showcasing College/University web design is edustyle.net and they are in the middle of their people’s choice awards, so check out the contenders in a variety of categories, and if you run across something that you think is fabulous, or something that you think is horrible, drop us a line in the comments.

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Reminding ourselves what not to do…

Sometimes it is helpful to remind ourselves what not to do, in web design as well as in life. And while the process of learning these lessons can often be funny for those watching, not repeating the mistakes of others is of great value in a large project like a web redesign. The site Web Pages That Suck nicely illustrates the Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 (scroll down a little bit, below the fold is where the content starts…). In amongst the snark there are some pearls of wisdom to be found.

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A Project Proposal Process

In the olden-days, proposing a new project like a department homepage reorganization, the moving of a site into Trillium, or creating a whole new site from scratch was typically initiated with a phone call or an email to someone in New Media, with a follow up face-to-face meeting.

After one such meeting, our office was talking about what type of questions always come up at the start of a project, and how it may be helpful to ask and think through those questions ahead of time, getting some thinking down before the fact to make it easier for everyone involved. Being “web people” we went ahead and created a little online form to ask these questions of people proposing projects.

The web intake questionnaire

If you have any thoughts on this please let us know in the comments below, there will be a great deal of our day to day work which doesn’t require something this involved, but when approaching a major development we think it will be a great foundation and launch pad.

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Interesting Navigation

Occasionally we may link to sites that have elements that we find interesting, or address a common design concern in a way that seems particularly new or notable. This is not an endorsement of the particular design, and it’s not an indication of how our own design will turn out. Just a little, “huh, you seen this?”

I ran across the recently redesigned homepage for Haverford College and they have some interesting ways of handling front page navigation and search:

Federated search [top right corner]: returns results in different categories like we have, but changes the orientation to use columns of various sizes and colors. Also adds student groups and profiles. Also they have their primary results be web pages, which for us is an additional click away.

Quick access [link on the right side]: as opposed to using flyout nav I guess, this puts a bunch of common or high priorty links all on the same high profile page page right off the front page.

Helpful hints: little boxes that pop up to highlight links/features/etc., is something I haven’t seen on a college site before. Too see them try refreshing the page a few times and they will pop up and go away in what seems to be a semi-random fashion.

I initially stumbled upon this site when browsing the higher education focused web design gallery over at eduStyle which is a neat site chock-full of the latest college and university web designs.

One last thing: If you ever run across an element on a web site that you either love or don’t love, we’d be interested in hearing from you. Post a comment on this blog or shoot us an email!

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5 people have already made the whale happy; but who couldn’t be happier?(Go ahead, make a comment…)