Skip to main content

introduction

Pick a higher education Web site. Any higher education Web site.

Likely what you've got is the agglomerated result of battling needs, wants, and not a little politics.



always crashing in the same car: recurring mistakes and misuses of the web


All levels of higher education Web sites have multiple and disparate audiences. They end to be designed by one or more committees, frequently comprised of individuals who substitute matters of taste and personal agendas for an understanding and appreciation of sound content, functionality, accessibility, and usability. They tend to fall prey to the Massive Upheaval style of site redesign (see The Case for Incremental Redesign, Parts I and II).

This series highlights many of the common and recurring misuses of higher education Web sites.

Popular posts from this blog

facebook, time to grow up

Originally published on August 28, 2006 I appreciate how Facebook has enabled me to connect with colleagues, and (younger) family members in a manner that is both informative and expressly cordial. It attracts students like Nutella attracts chocolate lovers, and because of that, I see interesting potential here. In fact, one of our faculty members at Penn State plans to try running his human-computer interaction course through Facebook this fall . Definitely worth pursuing.

how to make the worst of your content management system

I recently heard tell of the following activity, parading as content migration to an enterprise level content management system. I am not making this up: Copy large volumes of Web-content-to-be, page by page, into separate Dreamweaver files containing the design (created and sliced up in FireWorks) Copy/paste said Dreamweaver files into content wells of the content management system Repeat this activity ad infinitum until an entire Web presence is constructed in this fashion always crashing in the same car: recurring mistakes and misuses of the web When I heard this, something inside me snapped. Aside from the stunning inefficiency inherent in creating all these disparate Dreamweaver files, this activity points to a fundamental lack of understanding of what exactly a content managment system is. In the interest of quelling this misunderstanding in others, here follows a list of what not to do with a CMS: Dump a bad Web site into a good CMS. If your organization's Web presence is a ...

the case for incremental redesign: part ii

If you are in any way responsible for a Web site, you should have some understanding of the principles of Extreme Programming . Cultivated as a discipline of software development, it is a combination of ensuring that designs remain uncomplicated, centering changes around user requirements, and employing the concept of the "Whole Team." The result is that small changes are released as they are needed - and endorsed - by the client. Not surprisingly, Extreme Programming speaks well to Web management. Consider its core values: simplicity, communication, feedback, and courage. These are the bedrock incremental redesign. Simplicity - Integrate all site changes in small doses. Avoid tectonic disruption of the entire Web presence. Document faithfully, but do not get bogged down in over-documenting. Or overplanning. Leverage reusable objects. Better yet, get the site into a content management system - one that is scaled to its requirements. Eliminate unmanageable code morass by fol...