One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my two years as a university web developer is this:

Websites built to mirror the org chart, will result in confusing user experience for the average site visitor.  In particular, the prospective student.

Every administrative unit feels they need their own website.  Every college.  Every Department.  And my simple advice is to quietly and consistently smother that demand.  Smother it, and or prioritize it far beneath that of providing relevant content for your key audiences.  The user doesn’t care who’s providing that information, they just want it.  And they don’t want to dig through your borg silo-structured website to piece it all together.

I’m a fan of Khoi Vinh, Design Director of the New York Times.  And a nugget of wisdom from his recent Q&A is worth a CTRL-C.  It’s worth pasting into a word doc in big type and sticking it to your wall for permanent reference:

Every time we add a new feature to the site, redesign an existing section or create new digital products of any kind, we start with the premise that our primary “clients” are the people who will actually be using it…

…It’s kind of an obvious assumption, but it really is the hardest part of the process for any design team, regardless of the industry: setting aside your own familiarity with the content, your own expertise and envisioning a solution through the eyes of those whose relationship with your product is much more casual.

You’re looking at graph of our web traffic compared with that of other universities in this region.   I’m not a huge fan of Alexa, but today I just found out you can generate these comparison charts.  Short of getting access to the server logs or analytics of rival institutions, this is pretty telling.

Several thoughts about this graph:

• Isn’t it interesting how these university websites have a similar pulse?
• I’d like to know more about the Alexa’s formula for “reach”.
• Let’s pretend I had a google analytics data for the other three sites.  How close would Alexa’s data match up?

Lots of ideas here. It’s as if the folks at espn are intent on bringing great magazine writing to the web, and preserving the flavor of how we’d expect to see it in print. It flies in the face of what we’ve all heard, …that limitations of the web prevent great design. Well folks, great design is about taking those limitations and embracing them. Like Zeldman once wrote: “Limitations are the soil from which creativity grows.”

Wanna see all these in higher res? I took some screenshots and made a pdf.

These special “E-Ticket” articles come out once every two weeks or so on espn.com.

30 more after the jump… Continue Reading »

So I’m sitting at a table this morning with 4 other web people from colleges scattered around Texas and Louisiana, eating bland hotel breakfast food and chatting about the common issues web developers at universities face. And I realized that my new blog here is really just an extension of that conversation. Make that an easier, cheaper way to have that conversation without those tasteless donuts, the travel reimbursements, airport security, and predictable CASE presentations that often don’t yield anything new.

Then there’s Bob Johnson.

While the suits and university administrator types are stubbornly clinging to old-world communications habits and often resisting recommendations from their own web staff, …all of a suddent here’s a paid consultant, obviously a professional, …they’ll listen to Bob..

Suddenly these are new ideas.  And the conversation goes:

Suit: “Are we doing this? Can we get a plan to do this thing Bob is talking about?  What’s the holdup?”

Staffer: “Uhh, yeah.  It’s identical to the proposal you turned down 11 months ago.”

And that’s great.  Bob is great.  If Bob can open their eyes to the realities of the internet, and of the disappearing “controlled message” then thanks bob. Whatever it takes.

Allow me to illustrate.

It’s as if university-web-nerds are embarking on a voyage by ocean vessel to the distant shores of a forbidden land, whereupon they’ll trek overland by foot and penetrate the as-to-yet-impenetrable depths of jungle-academia, and they’ve carried with them and conscripted the services of one man: Bob Johnson, an emissary gifted of dialect, who has spent time among the inhabitants of this isolated jungle-people and can engage them in their native tongue.

Bob speaks to those people. This is no insult. Thanks Bob.

My university is in Little Rock, Arkansas, so it was pretty much a given that my boss would sign up everybody in the office for a CASE Conference, which will be held next week a few short miles from campus.

The schedule looks interesting. And I’ll probably meet fellow college-web-people from my region. In fact I’m supposed to moderate a roundtable discussion on Tuesday, early in the morning. And by early, I mean ridiculously early. 7:30 – 9:00 am. So I might be the only one at the table, moderating the voices in my head.

Some of the sessions look pretty interesting. I plan to attend the ones focused on new media and design, leaving about the boring stuff, ..you know: fundraising, management hoopla, etc.. Continue Reading »