Designing a One-Size-Fits-All University Web Template, and other Impossible Behemoth Challenges

Designing a One-Size-Fits-All
University Web Template, and
other Impossible Behemoth
Challenges

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Other Behemoth Challenges


Institutionalized


The similarities between prison life and
university life are several...
credit: http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/2005/06/


Both places have tiny rebellions and
mutinies, mostly insigniﬁcant, sometimes
violent.


Most people are involved in sports.
Every else reads.


Lots of free concerts.


Some say there’s also very bad pay,
and/or squalid living conditions.


The most common parallel: one’s
inability to leave after years of regimen.


Get to know the internal academic and administrative mechanics of a university
while keeping your edge, staying productive, and remembering your duty to the
external audience...


Don’t Get Comfortable


Design Arrogance

We design things to work one way,
and we’re unprepared for how people REALLY use them.


A desire path usually represents the shortest or most
easily navigated route between an origin and
destination.


Do not build what you cannon sustain


Oh, we could build a custom website for...


Websites, like campﬁres, require tending and
maintenance. You can’t build 12 of them, walk
away, and expect anything but failure.

They’ll become useless and die without constant care.


Or they’ll rage out of control and burn you alive.


The negativity. What
about the positives?

• cool things going on
• relative job security
• hey you’ve got a gym, and a library, at
WORK!


Universities are great places to work.

Interesting People

Interesting Stories

Great place to escape corporate life and
work for the public good.


Universities have trouble publishing and
promoting their content in a uniﬁed,
digniﬁed manner, which leads us to...


Web Templates


Designing a One-Size-Fits-All
University Web Template


Teamwork


Outliers


think about this
• Hundreds of crazy websites
• Who knows how many are coded
correctly. SEO?
• Who knows how many are accessible?
• They don’t beneﬁt from campus Google
analytics.
• Etc..

The student experience


…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.

Source: .eduGuru: Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive web presence


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.

Source: .eduGuru: Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive web presence


From a Branding Perspective


Branding is about more than logos and
colors.


User Experience IS the Brand.


Mass production of pages is a good thing because the
audience wants the information, not each content
contributor’s own personal vision of how it should
look. We tried that model. It was called GeoCities and
it didn’t work out that well.

source: http://www.contenthere.net/2009/07/you-bought-a-web-page-factory-not-a-webmaster-android.html


How to Proceed?

Where to Start?


Focus on enforcement?


Focus on building better templates.


Part of the problem is our current
template offering...


Mistakes were made.


Collective Blame


Banner Area


800 px width is old school


Global navigation


Do this once, and do it
right
• Design an attractive, sustainable system of
layout/templates.
• Design them to expand and adapt.
• Don’t get sloppy. Pay attention to detail.
Your work will be propagated and
reproduced on hundreds and thousands of
pages.


First, let’s get something straight.


Presentation is secondary.


In order of importance


In order of importance
1. Our web content.
What we say
How we say it
How we organize what we say

2. How that content is presented.


Product vs Packaging


Presentation is secondary, but still very
important.


Where to start?


Design standards, and centralized set of
templates


Who are you?

Web people in large organizations come in two types:


Who are you?

Those who conjure up web branding and identity policies...


Who are you?

And those who live under them.


This I Believe

For every 1 site owner upset about restricted design
freedom, there are 15 site owners who just want a
solid foundation and framework to work within.


This I Have Noticed
I’ve been pilfering through dozens of university web
branding guidelines lately. I’ll attempt to categorize
them:

• Nazi Web Branding Guidelines

• The Helpful and Supportive Web Guidelines

• The Loose, Lax, Almost Anything is Acceptable,
Web Branding Guidelines


Why is this
IMPORTANT?

Besides branding? It's important because it allows
people to spend their resources on CONTENT, not
hiring designers, css gurus and developers.

They can spend money on content creation. Text,
videos, photography, news, etc...


Don’t screw this up
• Be "more wider"

• Allow for a higher level of sub-branding/
customization and design while maintaining
consistent level of presentation.

• Require less graphic labor to setup/launch

• Room to grow; Allow pathways for future
enhancements


Start with a grid.


Why the boxes?
Show me something, Mr web designer.


Ye Old Box Model
helps us to:


Ye Old Box Model
helps us to:
• Get a head start coding the structure of the site(s)


Ye Old Box Model
helps us to:

• Make important decisions about structure and
formatting without caught up in conversations
about ﬁnding the right font, color, or photo


Ye Old Box Model
helps us to:

• Make important decisions about structure and
formatting without caught up in conversations
about ﬁnding the right font, color, or photo

• In the same way an author makes an outline before
writing a book, this serves as my visual outline
before creating a design.


What next?


Typography


http://informationarchitects.jp/the-web-is-all-about-typography-period/


Don’t screw this up
• Be "more wider"


• Require less graphic labor to setup/launch

• Room to grow; Allow for future enhancements

• We want something simple and elegant, in which
layout and typography can stand on their own.


http://ualr.edu/communications/assets/images/tierzoom/index.html


Cookie Cutter?


True Statement:

We don’t know for certain HOW people are viewing
our site(s).


One of the Goals



Things that Templates won't "Fix"


Well crafted messaging


Information Architecture


With templates, content contributors have less
responsibility for layout and branding of the site but
they are responsible for the words and pictures and
organization of the content.


The quality and craftsmanship of those aspects of the
site needs to be recognized.


Before you hire a designer,


hire a writer.


That is everything I know.

Learn from my continued failure...


Drew Stephens

The E to the mail:
wastephens@ualr.edu

Incoherent ramblings:
collegewebguy.com

Shorter incoherent ramblings: I took a photo of myself.
How pathetically egotistical.
twitter.com/collegewebguy

Steal some bookmarks:
delicious.com/thisisdrew

View an awful design portfolio:
thisisdrew.com/portfolio


Designing a One-Size-Fits-All University Web Template, and other Impossible Behemoth Challenges

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