At the first eduStyle Awards Boston University had an impressive showing. Of the 19 categories up for awards, Boston University was nominated in a total of 8. They tool 4 Judged Awards (Best Home Page, Best Visual Design, Best Use of Video, Best Online Tour or Maps) and 4 People’s Choice Awards (Best Overall Web Site, Best Home Page, Best Information Architecture, Best Use of Video, Best News Site). We recently had the chance to ask Scott Dasse the Creative Director of the Office of New Media at Boston University a few questions about the main BU website and BU Today. We’re working on a follow-up Q&A with the team behind Boston University’s Map site, the Winner of both the People’s Choice and Judged Award for Best Online Tour or Maps Site.
Scott, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I originally went to school to study visual art and music, and became an interactive designer in the late nineties. I ended up getting an MFA in graphic design here at BU while working on the homepage. At that time I was a Lead Designer in the Office of New Media, the interactive division of Marketing & Communications at Boston University. I’m now the Creative Director for New Media, overseeing a group of talented designers and producers. Our office has nearly doubled in size in the past two years, thanks to the support of the university’s leadership.
So what’s up next? We’re about to launch a major redesign of our undergraduate admissions website and are a few months away from launching an ambitious online version of our alumni magazine, Bostonia. My future goals include, among other things, the development of a robust social network for the BU community.
When was the current design of Boston University’s site launched?
It launched on September 7, 2006 (about a week late). See before and after.
Can you give us a quick overview of the project?
We began by working on the project strategy, defining the attributes that distinguish Boston University from other schools. We then looked for ways to prove these claims with real stories. Story telling became a central focus for the design. In early discussions it became clear that the best way to establish an emotional connection with our audiences was with the use of video.
For the sake of usability, I also wanted to ensure that visitors would have clear access to other BU websites. We spent a great deal of time revising the information architecture to make it as concise and explicit as we could.
The design itself happened over a weekend, inspired in large part by an iPod. After months of development and extensive focus group testing across the country, I’m amazed at how little the design changed.
What was the approximate time frame of the project?
It took about ten months from start to finish.
What is the size and make-up of your team?
We kept the group small, which I credit as a big part of the project’s success. (I’ve seen too many initiatives suffer when “designed by committee.”) The six people who met regularly included the leadership of Marketing & Communications, one experienced magazine editor, one great project manager, and one designer.
Are there aspects of the project you are particularly proud of?
It’s still different than anything else around, uncharacteristically simple for a university’s homepage.
Were there specific challenges you encountered?
At a place this size everyone wants a piece of the homepage. Everyone feels entitled to promote his or her department, award, or event on the university’s most highly trafficked webpage. Many large organizations use a “news and events” feed of some kind, which solves the problem in a diplomatic way, but I’ve always questioned the value that a laundry list of links brings to a homepage. We removed the news and ruffled some feathers, though we occasionally add a “featured link” for events like commencement.
The community and judges were particularly impressed with how clean this design is. Was it a challenge to convince stake holders to go with such a beautifully minimalist design?
Once we were able to show the community how much rich media content we could stuff into a single page, most of the stakeholders supported the design.
Did you have any sources of inspiration for this design?
Plenty! I mentioned the iPod. Apple is a clear innovator of industrial design. I’m a fan of minimalism when it’s used purposefully and appreciate things that are deceptively simple. As for the homepage layout, I borrowed principles from the Swiss tradition of international style graphic design (typically a large, central image surrounded with white space and type in a grid).
What is something you learned from the project?
I see this design as being generally successful, but after two years of metrics I’ve observed that a substantial segment of our external visitors don’t actively explore the media hidden behind the tabs. We’re now talking about a redesign, and one challenge I’d like to address is how to provide more of an impression for visitors who don’t browse deeply.
How has your community responded to the site? Have you made any adjustments based on feedback from the community?
The community seems proud of the website. And though most of the content has been refreshed annually, the design itself hasn’t changed.
What platform does the site use (PHP, asp.net, Rails, MySQL, etc.)
The homepage uses a bit of PHP to create static content for users without flash. The flash section itself is a shell that houses several different types of content modules.
What technologies did you take advantage of (AJAX, APIs, Flash video, etc)?
We have our own servers streaming flash video. The rest is plain old CSS/XHTML.
Does the website use a CMS of any kind?
The flash content relies on a single XML configuration file. The rest of the content doesn’t change enough to warrant a CMS.
Could you list the URLs of any articles or news items that present more information about the website.
This is the most I’ve ever written about it!
In addition to the home page and the overall site, BU had two other sites that won awards. Your team also worked on one of those sites, BU Today. Can you give us a quick overview of that project?
The second incarnation of BU Today took about 9 months to complete. I was the lead designer on that project, having the good fortune to work with the editors of BU Today and a few developers. The website uses Drupal for content management. The CMS had to be made to function like an edition-based publishing system, which presented technical challenges since that is not its default behavior.
Marketing & Communications at BU relies on the staff of BU Today to produce much of the content for the university’s “media channels.” For example, a video produced for BU Today might show up anywhere from the medical school’s website to alumni newsletters to youtube. The website is our primary source of content generation and a vehicle for content sharing. (We haven’t had a printed newspaper since 2005.)
One of the main reasons we redesigned BU Today was to give the stories more shelf life. Visitors complained of not being able to find yesterday’s stories, much less last year’s. To deal with the problem we created topic-based landing pages, an “editor’s picks” section, and an ever present index of recent favorites at the bottom of each page.
The first version of the website tried to do too many things and ended up doing nothing particularly well. Now it’s more focused. It’s an online publication with a daily publishing cycle during the school year and a corresponding email newsletter. We added ways to encourage discussion such as polling and commenting. We added bigger photos and bigger videos. The CMS is smarter, reducing work for the staff in fundamental ways.
It’s a more exciting and informative user experience. And, of course, it looks better.
