While working on the book I had an idea for a presentation. I’m refining the details of the presentation and thinking I might even submit a proposal for eduWEB (depending on how my schedule looks for the next few months). Anyway, I thought I’d put out a question to the twitterverse and see what I got back to help me refine the ideas a little more. Well I got so much good stuff (and twitter does such a bad job of letting you follow a conversation) I thought I’d share what I got in a blog post. I have organized them under headings in no particular order. If you have any that didn’t make the list, please comment. Thanks everyone for contributing. If you are not already following these people, you should.

1. Poor branding and lack of consistency

lack of organizational branding.
from @chasgrundy

inconsistent/ non-existent branding
from @escorial

lack of consistency
from @codyfoss

2. Bad Navigation

thinking about how you’re internally organized instead of how outsiders think of you.
from @chasgrundy

access to all pages from the homepage
from @escorial

lack of discipline when it comes to arbitrary global nav additions or additions to homepage content.
from @oaknd1

Organizing the Web site based on internal structure. It gets messy when reorgs happen.
from @khristine

Having a list called “favorite links” or “popular links” or even just “links”
from @rachelreuben

We nearly forgot to include links to Athletics in a redesign we did. Lucklily our user testing caught it.
from @jamesvandyke

3. Not planning for the long term

planning for launch, but not for future maintenance (empty/stale news or events areas)
from @chasgrundy

4. Inaccessible

non-accessible design and programming
from @escorial

Non-accessible flash
from @escorial

5. No Goals

No overall goal
from @codyfoss

6. Design/technology elements that don’t add to the site

Large images w/ no purpose
from @codyfoss

Using technology because it is new. ie moving items, drawers or ajax like tabs that are not intuitive.
from @nickdenardis

Cluttered homepage. They should be a nice mixture of relevant information + message by branding (emotions play a great roll)
from @escorial

Too many PDFs, instead of developing pages around that content. And yes, my school does this, and I hate it.
from @cfast

Flash for the sake of Flash.
from @davelowe

Weather on the hompeage?
from @nickdenardis

7. No Quality Control

no strong personality to advocate for overall site quality in the face of endless changes.
from @oaknd1

Bad quality images, pixelated or taken by somebody at the office.
from @escorial

8. Committees

Committees. Everything has to be decided by a committee.
from @lanej0

design by committee
from @escorial

9. Designing for the organization and not the user

Thinking anyone cares about long blocks of (link-free) text about mission statements and insular, jargon-filled content.
from @TimNekritz

politically-motivated nav and design rather than research- and user-centered design. my gripe of the day (wk., mo., and yr.).
from @stealingsand

Spending more time worrying about the message from the dean than successful ROI paths.
from @nickdenardis

10. The Rest

Making arbitrary rules like “everything must be accessible within two clicks of the homepage”
from @nickdenardis

Not having a mobile-friendly site.
from @barbchamberlain

a link for ‘prospective students’ that points to admission. the WHOLE SITE is for prospectives. don’t pigeon-hole.
from @theParanoids

If you liked this list

You may want to follow the people who put it together. :

• @circa1978 (me)
• @barbchamberlain
• @cfast
• @chasgrundy
• @davelowe
• @escorial
• @jamesvandyke
• @khristine
• @lanej0
• @nickdenardis
• @oaknd1
• @rachelreuben
• @stealingsand
• @theParanoids
• @TimNekritz

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.