If you’re gonna add video, here are a few guideline (feel free to add your own):
- Don’t auto-play anything. It’s bad manners. It’s like walking up to someone and starting into a big story without even saying ‘hi’.
- Make it relevant (i.e., not promotional stuff like your campus tour video or tv commercials)
- Keep them concise. Save the longer stuff for the deeper pages.
- Make them accessible. Provide download links, transcripts, etc to allow people to consume them on their own terms.

One of the items that I’m considering is bring rich video that engages the visitor to the forefront of the homepage. With broadband becoming more and more accessible, isn’t time to bring engaging content to the surface and not have buried behind a links or below the fold?

What are your thoughts about video as a focal point becoming a trend? Many higher education institutions have video but still have still images as the focal point to draw people in. Is this as effective of video? Thoughts? Thanks.

On the massive image note: Showing off great photography that intrigues and inspires interest in the institution can be a use, but I agree, large photos that are poor, hence serve no purpose other than damage the image of the university. A picture can tell 1000 words, either good or bad words.

Text/Copy: Be Bright, Be Brief. Be Done. Bold statements that mean something – not cutting edge research – who does dull research? ; )

We’ve been talking about online video for 15 years, heralding it as the next big thing… but only in the last few (3-5?) has it been really viable due to better connection speeds and capture devices. A cell phone or a Flip camera can document events or experiences and have the video online in minutes. Still, it’s not as easy as we wish.

1. What do you see as the biggest trend in higher-ed? Is it good or bad and why?

The biggest thing I’ve noticed is moving to a Cornell inspired layout. Good? I believe so, though I think schools should make an effort to inject their personality into it. That and integrating social networking. Good? The jury is still out on this one at the institution level.

2. Any trends you are happy to see going?

Elastic or variable width designs! Never was a fan of these. Shout me down if you will, but I think they are much less usable than fixed width designs.

3. What trends should others follow/ignore?

Follow – Bold positioning statements, high quality photos, mobile friendly sites, clear and concise text

Don’t follow – Large images that serve no purpose, designing for 800px wide, large blocks of marketing speak, MFS, etc

A bad video on a site doesn’t say: “ey look we are so high tech, we use video”, but mostly “ey look how crappy we do things… and next is a Facebook account!!!”

We are fighting here, advising people we just don’t want to put old, outdated, bad quality videos because we have them, but it is being a challenge.

I definitely rejoice whenever a site utilizes this oft overlooked area. As Luis said, it holds considerable potential.

As far as other trends, I do perceive a definite shift toward rich multimedia content on higher ed homepages. Large, compelling images have been a mainstay for some time, but we’re also seeing a lot more video being pushed to the forefront. This is mostly great. I say “mostly” because, as with any trend, there is some tendency to implement this thoughtlessly, without understanding what specific value the multimedia brings. Here, I’m referring to enormous images that take us nowhere, etc.

As far as fading trends – the obsession with fitting everything above the fold has definitely subsided, and I’m thrilled, because it means we’re going to be saying goodbye to boxed in design with tiny, illegible text shoved together to fit above some arbitrary line.

Please ignore MFS – Mirrored Floor Syndrome

When done well it is a nice SUBTLE touch, but very few are done well…

Those slide down trays of links in the header of a page seem to be getting more popular. see:
http://www.edustyle.net/site.php?site=488
http://www.edustyle.net/site.php?site=440

It is a good way to present a lot of links or information without the clutter of having them directly available on the homepage. Although @rommil tells me they make older users dizzy:
http://twitter.com/rommil/statuses/1102301371

2. Any trends you are happy to see going?

Tiny unreadable text.

3. What trends should others follow/ignore?

I’ll have to think about this one and come back.