Detailed response to blog comments

In last Friday's video response to the initial round of blog comments, I tried to give a sense of how White Whale staff and Southwestern's Web Management Team are approaching the most frequently stated comments and questions about the new Southwestern site design.  In a nutshell, everybody's comments are very well taken— there are some great ideas, and we're going to take as many of them as we can.

I'm sure you understand that there's a "too many cooks" factor at work also, and you can't please all of the people all of the time.  Some comments are diametrically opposed— one reviewer loved something, another hated it— so we're bound to disappoint someone.   I'm sure you all can understand that our goal is to make the design better, and more responsive to the Southwestern audience that's reviewing it, while staying true to the discussions, interviews, and strategic development that have led us in the current direction.

We have discussed all the blog comments individually, often at great length, with Southwestern's project team.  In this message I'm going to list the various changes that have been proposed in the blog comments, and say a few words about each one.  In some case the answer will be "sure, we're on it"— in others, all I can promise is that we're going to look into it, and work with the design to see if your concern can be addressed.  In each case, the final decisions haven't been ours; Southwestern's team has been responsible for the final thumbs up or down (or sideways) on each of these requests.

Here we go!

Comment:  The design is too busy. 

Response:  Agreed.  We think four columns with lots of text in each is probably too much.  We are going to reduce the amount of text on the page, and look into merging the first two columns into one (as suggested by Matt, one of the commenters).  At the same time, we ask you all to keep in mind that there are good reasons for pushing considerably more content than your current site; we are trying to tell Southwestern's story somewhat more loudly than it's been told in the past, and the transition may be a little jarring.  So let's meet in the middle; we'll try to lower the volume somewhat, while still presenting much more content than the current site does.

Comment:  Change "Financial Aid" to "Scholarships and Aid" in the top navigation.

Response:  The fact is, the link will probably have to match the name of the office, which has recently been renamed the Office of Financial Assistance.  So it's looking like the link will be "Financial Assistance."  

Comment:  The "27 Departments" list is cluttered and hard to navigate.

Response:  OK.  We had thought that simply presenting all the departments and majors might be enjoyable for prospective students looking for things they might want to major in.  And making the departments one click away from the homepage would increase their visibility, especially if the departmental sites themselves were really compelling and dynamic.  But this point is very well taken, and we're going to look for ways to achieve these goals without simply listing them all as we're doing here. (This will help with the "busy" as well.)

Comment:  What is up with "Right Now at Southwestern"?

Response:   The idea behind that feature is to give a day-to-day snapshot of what people at Southwestern are working on.  For obvious reasons, this wouldn't be a totally unmoderated feed of information from students to the homepage; in practice, there would probably be a big "Right Now at Southwestern" page that any student, faculty or staff member could post to, with as little moderation as possible; anything from that page that SU's Web folks found interesting could be plucked from there and used on the homepage.

Comment:  Change "Online Directory" to "Campus Directory"

Response:  There may be some reason why that has to stay the same—maybe there's a risk of confusion with some other directory— but that sounds like a good idea to us.

Comment:  More pictures of campus, fewer of people / other stuff

Response:  This comment came up a couple of times.  We tried to lead with a very strong campus photo— of the McCombs center— but this may not come off quite as strong as some of the older buildings.  We do believe it's important to integrate pictures of people, ideally people on campus; we want prospective students to know that this is the kind of place where people play frisbee on the quad (even in January).  Finding the right balance is one of the hardest parts of a .edu Web design.   What I can tell you is that the photos used on the homepage (currently the sign in front, a Pirate Bike, a teacher in class, and an astronomy photo to accompany a news story) will rotate and shuffle frequently.  We'll make sure SU's Web team keeps plenty of architecture in there to go with the other photos.

Comment:  Please integrate the Southwestern serif wordmark somewhere on the page.

Response:  We'll try.  It will probably be used in the footer on inside pages, and the Galliard font (which the logo's in) will most likely find its way into the mix somewhere.  But in creating the Web header for the new site, we wanted to draw a contrast from the official logo; if we used a font that was similar, like a bolded version of the sans-serif, it would look like sloppy design.  So in creating this new wordmark, which will be used only on Web materials, we went for maximum contrast from the official formal wordmark: from regular weight serif to bold sans-serif.

Comment:  The search box is too big.

Response:  Honestly, part of the reason it's so big is to draw attention.  Many of the people we talked with at Southwestern say the search doesn't work as well as it should; as a result, we're going to pay major attention to the search in the new site.   You can't tell from this JPEG, but we think we can safely say the SU search will attain levels of awesomeness not frequently encountered online.  So we want to make sure nobody misses it.  Having said that, we will look at it again once we've built the site out, and may well decrease its size if that seems appropriate for the design.

Comment:  The site should make Southwestern look more "Ivy League."

Response:  We agree that it's a good idea to emphasize the classic architecture and rigorous academics of Southwestern, perhaps a bit more than the first version of the design does, and we're looking into this as part of the revision process.   Communicating this idea— that SU is a place of academic excellence— is a key goal, and we'll try to get closer.   In general, we'd rather think of this process as working to reveal SU's true nature than trying to push it as an "Ivy League" school. 

Comment:  Please integrate SU's crest into the design.

Response:  We are looking into that in this next design round.  We wonder if integrating the seal into the design of this blog isn't influencing commenters?  It's certainly a nice looking seal, and we'll do our best to find a nice habitat for it on the homepage. 

Comment:  The School of Fine Arts is overemphasized in the design.

Response:  This may be a result of its prominent placement in the navigation, as well as the fact that it's linked to a couple of times right away, plus the paint background (see below).  We agree with the commenter who asked to change the bolded part of the link from "sarofim" to "fine arts", and that (plus another change or two) might help.  We do, however, think the SSFA ought to be well promoted on the new site, as events in the center draw attention and local interest (and can generate lots of great content for the site).

Comment:  The use of a gold paint texture makes SU look like an art school.

Response:  This comment is addressed at some length in the video response.  We discussed this comment, which was raised several times, with the Web Management Team at great length.  The decision was made to stick with the paint, for a few reasons, including the following:  

• It lets us use a gradient effect to achieve a more realistic depiction of gold than you could get with just a single color.
  
• It reflects the prominence of SU's school of fine arts, something most schools of SU's caliber don't have.
• It lets us get at a general "outside the box" metaphor that would be hard to express in words, but makes a lot of sense for SU.
• It's relatively unique on the Web, and stands out.

We do understand the idea behind the comments, though.  We think that by increasing the page's emphasis on academics, looking into more historic architecture, and rearranging the navigation slightly, we can adjust the balance.

And to the commenter who mentioned that he/she didn't even notice the paint splash, and simply focused on the page content:  Good!

Comment:  "Just Outside of Austin" is a bad way to introduce Southwestern— as if Southwestern is trying to be part of Austin, or to be something it's not.

Response:  This is a sensitive issue for many of the people who commented, we know.  The fact is, the general public (as well as many prospective students) have a very real need to be told exactly where Southwestern is.  If they haven't heard of Georgetown, or don't know Texas geography that well, a map can only be of so much help.  Letting everyone know right off the bat that SU is outside— not in— Austin answers that question right away, and lets SU draw on the very real association with the great cultural opportunities available just down the street.  The folks in SU's Admissions office have told us repeatedly that Austin is one of the most universally positively associated cities in the country, and there's no reason for SU not to take advantage of that to some degree.

It may be overemphasized.  And we are probably going to give that top paragraph a rewrite to adjust the tone somewhat.  But we do think you're likely to see Austin prominently mentioned in that top paragraph in the next round.

Comment:  What does "To Survive and Excel" refer to?

Response:  That's the name of the official history of Southwestern University, written by Bill Jones, now Professor Emeritus of History at SU. It covers SU's history in voluminous detail, filled with fascinating anecdotes, great photographs, and historical context.

Each of those mottos, incidentally, will be clickable, and upon clicking will open a little window on the page putting that "motto" into context.   So some of the more inscrutable mottos can be followed up on if a user so desires.

Comment: The website isn't directed toward internal audiences as much as it should be.

Response:  This is perhaps true to a degree— at least in terms of the page's visual aspect.  However, there's a great deal going on here that's *only* for internal audiences, especially in the top area of the page; a link to a dedicated student gateway, directory and Web search, and a "quick access" page that will put tons of links to frequently accessed resources at your fingertips.  And as I've said, the search will be great.

Below the fold, the right side of the page is clearly geared to prospective students.  But the left side should include news/events content of interest to everyone.

Comment:  The address should be in the footer.

Response:  Fine.  We all like the way it's currently presented (at the bottom of the second column), but it does take up a lot of space, and it's a bit of an unconventional location.  Moving it to the bottom will give us a bit more whitespace to work with.  (We'll still be able to get that Apple-ish footer effect, which some of the commenters responded well to.)

Comment:  The word "University" should be used after Southwestern, because that's its full name.

Response:  This was by far the most frequent comment.  There are many reasons behind that decision— and the choice to go that way was made by SU's team.  However, it's not a final decision, and the volume of comments definitely calls for a close consideration of the issue.  We'll publish another blog post exclusively devoted to this question soon.

Comment:  The design looks too modern / too new / like MySpace / "hip" / etc.

Response:   This also came up frequently, and there's no easy answer here.  As designers, we are definitely taking some steps toward bringing a much more modern appearance to the site, and the committee we're working with supports this move (and has encouraged us throughout the design process).  While there may be a bit more we can do to balance the modern and timeless aspects of SU, the design is definitely moving in a more contemporary direction.

What I will tell you is this.  We are not trying to be "hip" with this design, or to copy any social networking site designs.  What we have tried to do as designers here is bring a much larger degree of confidence and boldness to SU's site design, and to create a site that doesn't attempt to persuade you of anything, or be anything it's not, but rather wears its identity proudly and boldly.  80% or more of college Web sites look the same to me, frankly, and this one doesn't. 

Now, being different isn't a goal in itself.  And I think that you'll find (especially once we've toned down the volume of content being pushed here) that if you take away the paint stripe, what you've got is a clean, nicely organized, straightforward Web site design.  Over time, this is what's going to make the greater impression.

And like I said, just wait until you see the search.

If there are any comments that I haven't covered in this distillation, I apologize; please comment here, or email me at jason@whitewhale.net.

Responses to your comments

We thought we'd try something new for our initial response to your thoughts:

Sorry, you need Javascript enabled and the latest version of Flash Player to view this video.

More detailed, point-by-point discussion to come in a future post.

Final candidate, Southwestern.edu homepage

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Southwestern redesign blog.

As many of you know, all of us at White Whale came to campus a few months ago, stayed for a few days at the lovely San Gabriel House across the street from campus, and talked with as many people from Southwestern as we could find. Students, faculty, staff, dogs, Pirate Bikes, etc. We interviewed everybody. And during the course of that trip we started developing ideas and strategies for this Web design process that we've been refining, publishing, debating, revising and fine-tuning since then, both internally and in collaboration with Southwestern's very capable Web redesign committee. It's been a lot of fun.

The final plan for the new Southwestern site, which we'll be implementing over the next few months, includes a new tool for managing site content that will let more people maintain their own Web content, taking some of the load off Southwestern's Web staff; tools for creating, tagging and sharing news items; lots of refinements to the search engine; several new ideas for gathering and presenting content for the site; and a lot more. You'll be learning about all those details in the days to come.

But for now, we're going to start with the final release candidate for the Southwestern homepage. We're posting it here for public review, and we welcome any comments that you have on the design; just because this is a "final" design doesn't mean it's 100% done. We're still very much open to community input; we can't guarantee to make every change that is requested, but we do promise to consider every serious suggestion.

Because we're designers, we like to spend time explaining the reasoning and philosophical approach we've taken to produce this design. (Designers are annoying that way.) If you'd like to skip the details and go right to the final product, feel free to scroll down to the end of this post. But if you're interested in the ideas behind the design, read on:

Design philosophy

Some ideas that sound like cliches in writing make sense when expressed visually.

The idea that Southwestern students “think outside the box” or “color outside the lines” is something that wouldn’t work in print; it would come off as empty marketing language. But—like many cliches—it contains a kernel of truth. The fact is, Southwestern is seeking students who are willing to think outside conventional paradigms, to take chances, to make difficult choices.

The typical A student who graduates from a Texas high school, and wants to take the path of least resistance, making as few sharp turns as possible, is likely to wind up at the University of Texas. A top graduate from somewhere else in the country who is seeking the most direct path to a Wall Street job, or who has designs on a conventional “liberal arts education” is likely to head for the Northeast.

The students who have found Southwestern, it seems to us, are those who have looked outside the path of least resistance. They’ve chosen a school that may not have nationwide name recognition, and may not be in a state known for the liberal arts (or liberal politics)— but they’ve found something at Southwestern that resonates with the less conventional path they envision for their lives.

This idea—that Southwestern seeks students who may not fit conventional patterns, and that those students are looking for Southwestern— is reinforced in a subtle way by a Web design where a painted background doesn’t conform perfectly to a crisp, conventional box.

The box around this design represents convention, predictability and utility—qualities that are essential to a well-functioning Web site. The misprinted, outside-the-line paint background represents the creativity, questioning, and willingness to take risks that are the hallmarks of the ideal Southwestern applicant.

The gold paint background achieves a couple of project goals. First, the several colors involved in a “paint stroke” help us achieve a realistic impression of gold without having to rely on a single color (for there is no single flat “gold” on the Web). Instead of making a choice between olive/beige and bright yellow, we can have them both, by pushing a strong gradient-based version of yellow that will find expression on the site in several ways. (The medium gray used as an accent color helps bring the gold out effectively.)

Finally, the use of paint in particular reinforces Southwestern’s deep engagement with the arts. This element of the design will be made more prominent in the separate design for the Sarofim School of Fine Arts.

Title, motto, search, navigation

We have chosen a strong, extra bold, all-caps sans-serif font (Gotham Black) for the SOUTHWESTERN title banner. This provides a nice contrast with the Galliard serif wordmark that will continue to be used in all formal contexts.

The title is complemented by a motto that will change on each refresh to express key brand messages (Engaging Minds, Transforming Lives); key elements that set Southwestern apart (Since 1840 or Georgetown, Texas); its original Latin motto (Non Quis Sed Quid); and other messages, ideas or provocations as dreamed up by the Web group. The idea set by the changing motto is that no one phrase can sum up Southwestern to the world, but rather that Southwestern is a dynamic, changing place. Some mottos will have a more lighthearted air; others may occur on a much rarer basis (say, 1 out of 100 page refreshes).

The oversized search box advertises itself, and invites users to explore the site with search (which we will ensure is a transformative experience in its own right).

A small amount of blank space after the header creates more prominence for Southwestern’s name, and allows the painted background to show through clearly. Then a main navigation, which borrows some of its design from the modern concept of a tag cloud, presents the site’s 12 categorized primary navigation links in a compact yet attractive format that makes it easy to survey at a single glance.

Then a gray utility navigation bar, with text reversed in gold, presents functional navigation for audiences (For Students, For Alumni, etc.) and quick links to the Directory and Quick Access, an all-in-one links page.

Note: We are exploring adding Quick Access technology to the primary site search, which might open up a spot here for a link like Offices & Services.

The content of the homepage

As an early step in our design process, we recommended that Southwestern include a fairly large amount of content on its homepage.

This is because we believe Southwestern has something to prove, a lot to say, and a long way to go to tell its story to the world. Southwestern’s academic excellence, affordability, and dynamic community all ought to find expression on the homepage. While a quieter, image-driven design might be nice to look at, we feel backing that graphic approach up with lots of text, highlighting many areas of the Southwestern community, is the best way to get started. Visitors to the site will get the impression of stepping into a dynamic community, buzzing with activity.

Page content: Left side

The second most prominent feature of the page, besides Southwestern’s name, is the first half of a sentence about Southwestern’s location. “JUST OUTSIDE OF AUSTIN,” the page begins, followed by some welcoming text about Southwestern. The design naturally leads the eye downward from here, to images and text that reinforce Southwestern’s key messages.

“Right Now at Southwestern” contains short notes that tell what’s happening throughout the community (similar to the style of Twitter: https://twitter.com/). “Southwestern is Affordable” states one of SU’s key points briefly and plainly; “27 Departments” lists the many fields of study available to SU students; “Go Pirates” gives some real estate to SU’s athletic programs. Photos used in this area are general campus photos, that align with the content following them if appropriate.

A “footer” area with Southwestern’s address and contact information anchors the left side, with a background that mirrors the painted area at the top of the page.

Photo gallery

The homepage will always feature a photo gallery, although its content may change and shift as needed. Photo galleries on particular topics— a walk around campus, inside/outside the classroom, Southwestern’s past and future, or any other topics to be developed— will be presented on the homepage, either one at a time or in rotation.

Page content, right side

The right side, with a gold background complicated by a semi-transparent background of gold paint, is for dynamic content (news and events) and evergreen “quick links” for sites like the library and mySouthwestern.

One news item should be paired with a large, compelling photo. The photo in the rightmost column should be another general interest campus shot. The one currently used in the design— a Pirate Bike on the campus green— may be used permanently, as it ties the yellow/gold colors of the design directly to Southwestern’s branding.

The goods

Here is a link to the new Southwestern homepage design.  Click or refresh to see different views of the homepage.

OK, it's your turn

Click below to leave your comments.  You don't have to sign up for an account to comment; however, we do ask that you identify yourself by name, and let us know your relation to Southwestern, along with your comment. Anonymous comments may be deleted.

Enjoy!

- Jason Pontius, White Whale Web Services