Northwestern’s Web site got more than a fresh coat of paint this summer, as the University unveiled a redesigned home page with input from across campus.
As of last month, the home page now includes the three most requested links by students at the top of the page. Previously, there was not a link to Blackboard. Now, CAESAR, Blackboard and Webmail are all easily visible in the upper right hand corner, said Alan Cubbage, vice president for University Relations.
“I remember as a freshman last year sometimes I had difficulty finding CAESAR or Blackboard, but this will be much easier,” Weinberg sophomore Sally Yin said.
In order to best assess what the NU community desires in a Web site, the Office of Web Communications conducted an extensive online survey last year of students and faculty. The feedback showed what people liked about the previous site and the changes they hoped to see. The office utilized focus groups in order to gain optimum feedback, Cubbage said.
Faculty and staff were most interested in having easy accessibility to the people search tool, said Anastasia Masurat, information architect in the Office of Web Communications.
“We wanted to make the search more prominent and give an option to search for either specific people or Northwestern topics,” she said.
Eight designers worked specifically on the Web site revamp, which took more than a year to come to fruition, Cubbage said.
“There was a lead designer and developer but virtually everyone (in the Office of Web Communications) had a hand in it at some point,” he said. “This was obviously a really big project that we took a lot of time on.”
The team considered how much they wanted the site to be used as a springboard to other pages versus how much they wanted it used as a news aggregate in its own right, Cubbage said. Adding a more visual feel was important in the redesign, Masurat said. The team chose to add a self-directed slide show with pictures that will match to different news stories featured on the page.
“We tried to create a balance – it gives us a bit of a marquee so we can tell the story better with video and photo galleries. We wanted to make it a portal in that you can get to Webmail or (Blackboard) in one click,” he said. “The goal was to make it useful for a variety of users.”
Both Yin and George Lu, a Weinberg sophomore, said they liked the physical changes, especially to the home page.
“Previously, there was just one image of a campus beauty shot,” Masurat said. “We tried to give it a more sophisticated look and feel.”
While traffic to the site has increased since the new changes were introduced, the real test will come now that Fall Quarter has begun and more students and faculty are utilizing the site, Masurat said.
“I’m pretty happy with it, but I think time will tell,” she said. “The beauty of the Web is we can go in and change things around.”
