Archive | design
Got Centerpiece? So Does Everyone Else.
Well, HighEdWeb has come and gone yet again. Year after year, I find it continues to be a worthwhile investment. In case you didn’t get a chance to drop in on my presentation this year, I was able to con a kind friend into holding a little Flip cam the whole time through my crazy [...]
Continue reading...Homepage Centerpiece Survey
At HighEdWebin Cincinnati I will be giving a presentation on the role and strategy surrounding centerpieces on home pages in higher ed. This information will be used in a 100% anonymous manner to reinforce and inform certain points that I will be making. The information you provide will be extremely helpful in ensuring [...]
Continue reading...Redesign Your University Website According to xkcd
I’m sure most of you saw the University Website xkcd comic last week and shook your fists in the air. The front page of a university website is a battleground, no doubt. Dylan Wilbanks posted a good reaction to the comic on his blog and Steve Kolowich covered it extensively in Inside Higher Ed.
Continue reading...Online Cataloging Done Right(ish)
I think that out of any web project I’ve ever dealt with in higher education, online cataloging has got to be the biggest white unicorn of them all. If you scour the web for them, you’ll discover that examples of ‘good’ catalogs are few and far between (and you’ll note I’m certainly not putting my [...]
Continue reading...QA on Higher Education Web sites. How to do it and what to look for.
Running a web office I see a lot of sites, quality assurance is part of every minute of my day. Everything I see goes through the same quality checks otherwise we don’t launch it. Tools and people will come and go, quality on the other hand is the one thing in a web office that [...]
Continue reading...[Results] Are Classes in Your Toolbox?
Towards the end of 2009, we started a new survey of higher ed web professionals to take a look at one potential way that you are using the resources around you. The question centered on a fairly simple, central concept: odds are that on your campus you have classes teaching the creation of different kinds [...]
Continue reading...Where is the fold? Google browser size vs. actual heatmap
Google released a tool yesterday called Google Browser Size in effort to show how users with various screen sizes see your site. They also wrote up a blog post about it.
Continue reading...[Guru Survey] Are Classes In Your Toolbox?
Good budgeting includes doing effective resource management. The web has to produce a lot of different media, and so making the most of our resources is extremely important. This is becoming increasingly important as we’re asked to do more with less. The neat thing about higher ed though is that we have access to a [...]
Continue reading...Save your sanity and use a grid
University web designers have a tough enough job as it is, juggling users needs while pleasing committees and numerous other stakeholders. Doesn’t matter if your web office has complete control or just influence, using a grid can make completely unrelated sites look uniform.
Continue reading...Designing a Custom Flip Cam
How is this for great - one of the first things I got to do after being officially hired by Fire Engine RED was design and buy a Flip MinoHD to use at NACAC. After conferring with Keith, a fellow new FER employee and a compatriot from an old job, I opted for one of [...]
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