eduStyle || 3 Things - Notre Dame University

In August 2007 Notre Dame redesigned their web site. In this 3 things Drew analyzes the good and bad of that redesign.

3 things Drew likes

What's popular with me?

It's the Popular Sites feature which, according to the Notre Dame team, was determined by analytics from the previous site. This is a great example of where data can help guide your user interface (Sorry Mr. President, the advisory sub-committee on campus gold fish ponds isn't reeling them in). I also like the Help Center very much and the "ajaxy" effect for both features helps maximize that valuable real estate at the top.

Riding the carosel

I've taken a ride on the carousel and I'm buying myself another ticket. The videos have a high production value and, for the most part, are the appropriate length with solid pacing. The ND personality comes through loud and clear. How do you give outsiders a window into your campus? It's called Flash 9 and 1024, baby. I'm glad the ND team made the decision to use the latest and greatest from Flash. It pays off with a unique experience you won't soon find on any other university homepage.

First Class

A first-class university deserves a first-class design and, once again, the ND team delivers. The color palette, photography and overall CSS-mastery is impressive.

3 things Drew doesn't like

News and Events

The News and Events section of the homepage could be spiffed up a little bit. The sentences seem a little vertically squeezed and could use a small line-height increase in the CSS. But hey, if that's the worst of your problems, I'd say you're doing pretty well. I also think it would be cool to have larger news images that span the length of the column (say 280x100) with the description filling in right below.

wmv?

Hey, somebody slipped a Windows Media Video (.wmv) file into the carousel. Agh, the horror! I'm assuming that doesn't happen often, but it was a brow-furrower. On the topic of video, it'd also be great to have volume control and a full-screen button.

Too much of a good thing?

It might be worth adding a feature that allows users to shrink or collapse the carousel on secondary pages. After a while I just wanted to search through the content and not have to scroll past the multimedia. Perhaps there’s a way to better integrate the player with the content on those pages.

About the Author

Drew Geraets is the Digital Media Manager for the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is also responsible for development of the New York City News Service, a new student-driven Web-based wire service that feeds New York neighborhood stories to news organizations. He is very interested in revitalizing journalism through the Web. Here are a few sites that Drew Geraets likes.

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3 Things - Notre Dame University