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

Twitter is an amazing tool. I use it daily to interact with other higher-ed web people, get breaking tech news, follow live feeds of events, and get (or give) mundane updates on people’s lives. I have to admit, when I first came across twitter I didn’t really get it. Not that I didn’t understand the premise, but I didn’t understand how it could create anything but more noise. I was wrong. I love twitter. It has created a virtual office full of people like me. They get my jokes, understand subtle web geek references, and are smart and willing to jump in with suggestions and help. What makes it all the more interesting is that tweets are limited to 140 characters or less. Not much to be doling incredible pieces of wisdom in … or is it.

I have been playing with the idea of creating a collaborative blog post using twitter for some time. I have made a few failed attempts, but really wanted to see the idea fly so I persisted. This week I sent out a tweet (it’s what twitter posts are called) looking for tweets of advice for web designers/developers in 140 characters.

So here is the first in a series (I hope) of Twitter blog posts. Here is the challenge I posed:

You have 140 characters to share the most important piece of advice or a tip for web designers/developers. Be creative. If you make me laugh, you’re definitely in the post

Here is what I got from some of my favorite twitterers (is that a word?):

From bradjward

Coding is like giving a speech. Just pretend your audience is naked. Because on the internet…. there’s a pretty good chance it’s true.

From ganyardp

Just like adding fashion accessories…look at it before launch (you leave the house) and take one thing out (off)…less is more.

From chasgrundy

“Marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable.” Start by scrapping what you’ve always known and be ready to grow extra-thick skin.

From jjsteffe

Alot 2 weeks or more for IE6 testing/conversions in your redesign – or just uninstall IE from your boss’s machine to make life simple.

From rachelwebster

Listen. Listen more. Listen again. Then process what you think you heard, and run it by your clients before starting anything.

From rieye

Look at what you are doing. If it bores you, it’ll bore other people.

From fienen

Whatever you do, don’t stop learning, because what was right last year is probably wrong now. That goes double if you’re a man.

From jamespaden

Fire bad clients. Serve good clients as if your life depended on it.

From escorial

Creating something from scratch is easy, the beautiful challenge is to crate something within the frame and constrictions of a brand.

From nickdenardis

Be kind to others and comment your code. Try something new every project, make management rein you in. Remember, Red Bull is your friend.

From rolaine

Biblical take: BALANCE of truth and grace. Too much truth/info = boring. Too much grace/design element = too busy on the eyes.

From luker

Web Design 101: Communicate, don’t decorate.

From wnalyd

One day you’ll discover everything you’ve learned about the web is wrong. For the second time. Never get cocky about the web.

From aaronrester

Walk a mile in your users’ shoes, and it will save a lot of wear and tear on the seat of your pants.

From ctbarber

Run. Run fast.

From ericstoller

Tables are for picnics, not websites. Accessibility is a must, why Flash when you can CSS? Don’t steal source, eduStyle users will notice…

From abstractrandom

If it’s obvious, then it doesn’t need to be said. EX: Complete the fields in the form below and click submit.

From ctbarber

Learn from others, and share what you learn.

From pberry

So I was checking in on the stats on eduStyle today and noticed that we got “Stumbled Upon” which gave the site a nice little bump in traffic. So I was kicking around the site to see what was going on a realized that this is one site that is not on the user profile list … so I added it. So if you are a Stumble Upon user make sure you add the link on your profile page so you can show up on the User Links list.

While I was at it I also added another site I have been kicking around a little the last few weeks, Design Float. Design Float is a digg clone for the design community. It doesn’t seem to have a lot of users right now, but I figured it there is anyone in higher-ed on there we might be able to build up a little community. So go add that one to your profile page too.

Am I missing any other networks that higher-ed folks are active on?

As soon as the latest greatest web technology takes the web world by storm we in the higher-ed web community are pretty quick to try and figure out how we can use it to reach out to our communities. Pretty soon we have a higher up asking if we have heard of x tool and soon after that we have the marketing folks trying to figure out how we can leverage the tool to drive up recruitment or to reach out to students. Some of these sites are a pretty easy fit for higher-ed. Facebook for example has nice group/page features that allow us to have a presence where our students/prospective students are. YouTube lets us easily create a channel for our videos on the worlds most popular video sharing and freely take advantage of the social features while also using it to post videos to our own site. Digg’s use in higher-ed has been much less obvious to me. Most pages on my college’s site wouldn’t even get a single digg let alone make it to the front page of the site.

I have been a Digg user for several years. When I started thinking back to the college or university pages that have made on to Digg I quickly noticed a pattern. There are really 3 things that get us on to the home page of Digg:

1. Tragedy
2. Controversy
3. Research

The first 2 are obviously not the types of things that we want to do to try an get exposure and they are typically coming from outside sources anyway. The third though, is the piece we should really take notice of (that bolding was no accident). The users of Digg seem to digg the interesting research that is taking place at our schools particularly in the sciences. You can see the results of a search for posts with .edu in the url.

Now your goals with Digg will not be the same as they would be on Facebook, mySpace, or YouTube. You won’t be building very many long term relationships and one story about some groundbreaking, interesting, or often bizarre research project going on at your school will probably not drive a lot of registrations. But it can build awareness and potentially reputation for the school and get your schools name in front of thousands of eyes for free. There are also cases of mainstream media picking up on stories because of their popularity on sites like Digg. So when you are working on those interesting research based features for your homepage or building up a research site from some new grant money, don’t forget to include a “digg this” button. You could be the next gravity lamp or checkers playing computer. Go Digg the latest .edu star on Digg.

A few weeks back I noticed a little snippet on the Facebook “What’s New” page that caught my attention. My one complaint about Facebook had been that it didn’t give you enough control over what people see about you. It is not easy to turn down a friend request from a work mate (or boss), but I’m not sure I want that work mate seeing all my goofy personal moments either. I have also made some contacts via this site with people that I may not know that well (they are probably not stalkers … but who knows). There have been several stories in the news over the last few month about wrecklessly posting on Facebook getting people in trouble. I’m concerned about getting into trouble, but I’d prefer to let real friends/family see different things than my work friends or business colleagues and the limited profile has just been too limited. So here is what go me all excited:

Sort out your friends.
We’ll let you organize that long list of friends into groups so you can decide more specifically who sees what.

Exactly what I wanted/needed.

Well Facebook launched the first phase of this project today. You can now create groups of friends (that eliminates at least one app I have installed) and message or see updates based on those groups. The Friends page has been completely redesigned to accommodate this shift. I can’t wait to start building different profiles based on different groups. Watch out Linked-In, myFamily, Ning, etc. it looks like Facebook is getting serious about being your only solution for social networking.

Go friend me now … I promise not to put you in the stalker group.

Read: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7831767130