Fragmented Web Experiences and Frustrated Web Designers

There’s a great conversation going on at EduGuru on the topic of “outliers”.

Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive Web presence

…Along they way they bounce through three additional department Web sites, but the prospective student feels like they’ve been to three completely different university sites. Each step along the way they have to figure out where the navigation and search bar have moved, how their content is organized, what lingo they use, and likely have a completely different experience on each site. Sound familiar?

Developing a university-wide Web design template that is flexible enough for all departments, programs and units to use is one behemoth of a challenge.

The “5 steps to reign in outliers” are very good.  It’s a great post, the the comments are a great read too.  There are many sides to this argument. And multiple points of view depending on WHERE you are in the University food chain. A top-level branding/template czar? A department level web designer?

Nobody likes to be pigeonholed into a box. And this is especially true of web designer types.
A noteworthy example being Douglas Bowman quitting google in frustration over his inability to coexist with their limited design philosophy.

I’ve posted quite a bit here on my blog about the struggles I’ve had in working to create flexible templates. And only recently have I started to get over the hump. It’s tough.

In particular:

University Web Template Hell, or Variation within Constraints?

and

Did he say “Balkanized”? What a Great Word.