eduStyle || 3 Things - North Carolina State University

In August 2007 North Carolina State University launched a redesigned home page. In this "3 things" Stewart Foss assesses the good and the bad of the redesign.

3 things Stewart likes

Changing Colors

Simple but brilliant. Every time you come to the page the background of the feature area is randomly selected from a series of colors. Keeps the page fresh without a lot of work.

Video Player's Extras

Embed, transcript, and closed captions. Embed should be a no brainer (think free advertising), but you'd don't see this on enough school sites. These videos could be the next Chocolate Rain. And we all know we should have transcripts and closed captions, but how many of us really do?

Share Your Story

Simple easy way to collect stories like this. Not a bad idea that they include the "Terms" on the landing page for this.

3 things Stewart doesn't like

Click This Date

Why so much emphasis on the date? Unfortunately I can hardly read the headline. I would think these colors should be reversed to make the headline grab my attention instead of the publishing date.

Crummy Thumbs

These just look like they are the squished down version of the feature photo (or poster frame from the video). They'd look much better if they were properly resized.

Two Titles

I am sure there is a practical reason that the name of the school is on this page twice ... right on top of each other ... but I haven't figured it out. If I were them, I'd drop the one on top and just say it once.

About the Author

Stewart Foss is the Manager of Web Services at Grant MacEwan College and the creator of eduStyle. Here are a few sites that Stewart Foss likes.

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3 Things - North Carolina State University