Design feedback. What we heard and what’s next.

Wow!  Thanks for your valuable and honest feedback.  This blog received nearly 10,000 views since we posted the designs and over 1,000 of you responded to the poll.  Your 500+ comments show that you are truly connected with Carolina.

The comments have been informative and encouraging.  Can everyone be pleased?  No, but we’re determined to strike the right balance.

Before we touch on main themes, please know that the design is evolving, based in large measure on your comments.  The themes that emerged from comments included:

Color:   Some of you like a dark background  and some don’t.  As far as how background color impacts readability, Web standards show that high contrast is of utmost importance.  We will continue to test and evaluate this.

Branding:  Some of you mentioned highlighting Carolina Blue and making the University’s logo bigger and more prominent.  We hear you.

Libraries:  Placing the Libraries link at the top of the page enables users to quickly access the site from every page in the same way as Directories and Maps.  Usability testing showed that people had no problem finding this link. Nevertheless, we’re working to make this more prominent.

Looks like something you’ve seen before: Successful sites have many elements in common.  Neither design was pulled off a template rack or copied.  Heck, I think the basis for design B is a Mondrian painting or a Mackintosh detail, so that’s high praise in my book.

Sense of place:  Some folks think that the large photo in design A gives a sense of place, especially if other photos of Carolina rotate through.  This has always been a priority.

Academic life:  With the addition of real content – photos and stories about the people exploring, creating and researching – the site will take users deep into Carolina’s meaningful academic life.  The design will serve as a starting point for this and the content will ultimately show the substance and heart of Carolina.

Photos:  Will images change?  Yes. The idea is to frequently interchange photos of our beautiful campus, academic settings such as laboratories and classrooms, and our people to show what life at Carolina is like.  Keeping the best user experience in mind, many photos will take users to the stories and people behind them. And, by the way, the photo stream will be moderated.

Thanks again for your feedback.  We’ll continue to use the blog to keep you up-to-date on our progress and we welcome your comments at any point.

On behalf of the Web Advisory Committee,  Scott.

Designs are here! Tell us what you think.

After months of research and testing with users, including current and prospective students, parents, alumni, faculty and staff – we are at the design stage. We’d like to share a couple of design directions with you and get your feedback. With your input, we’ll refine and test a new design and develop some second-level templates.

Here are our goals for the new site design:

• a site that not only meets users’ needs, but illustrates the academic exploration, life-changing research, and important work of our faculty, students and staff.
• a user-friendly site. That means a new design that helps you find what you’re looking for – quickly and easily. It also means more relevant content, including RSS feeds, campus updates, a mobile version of the site, a Libraries link at the top of the page, and plenty of new features.
• a distinctly Carolina site. We don’t want to look like every other University Web site out there. We want to go in a direction that shows why Carolina is distinctive.

A couple of notes on both designs.

1. Navigation: Users have multiple entry points, based either on user group or by content category.
2. You will see the places for:
   • A big story (breaking news or an in-depth look at a subject)
   • Campus updates, such as Commencement information, with longer shelf lives
   • User-submitted photos
   • News and calendar feeds
   • Social media

Enough said. Here are the designs.

Click on the image to zoom in.

Click on the image to zoom in.