XCKD.com published a cartoon last Friday that was an interesting venn diagram take on a University homepage. This cartoon set off a brush fire in Higher Ed web communities debating the user-centric versus promotional design schools of thought. For those of you who haven’t seen the web comic:
The cartoon has been discussed repeatedly on both sides of the debate camp-user versus communications camps. I came across a fantastic, must read, article by Dylan Wilbanks that talks to both schools of thought (no pun intended!) and, as Wilbanks states, “the home page is about promotion, but it’s also about focusing on your users and their needs.” His article continues on to discuss the evolution of the web from the “toy” to the “tool”, and gives real-world examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly of university web efforts.
While looking at the cartoon and reading Wilbank’s article, I couldn’t help but think how this tongue-in-cheek cartoon not only applies to university homepages, but also the homepages of individual departments, labs, and centers. Are you as technologists, communicators, webmasters, providing a balance to your end users?
As Wilbank points out:
“Noel-Levitz’ recently released E-Expectations survey found 1 in 4 prospective undergraduates took a school off their potential applicant list because of a poor experience with that school’s website. We can say all we want about how nice multimedia presentations and marketing materials help draw students in, but if you don’t give the students what they want, they will leave.”
The key for any website is to strike that balance between the tool and the cool-to provide the users access to the information he or she came to your site for, but also providing the opportunity for delight in discovering something he or she didn’t know already. Balancing the desires of The Task Master users and The Curious Explorer
users is a difficult task. Encouraging the Task Masters to become Curious Explorers is, in fact, what many content providers are looking to do.
Wilbank’s ends his article with:
“The web is a tool. It is not a toy. Content may be king, but the user is God.” (Which I think is a really great line) “And they demand — and deserve — usability and findability. Let content strategy and user-centered design lead the way, not the hither and thither of provosts and presidents and professors and their pontifications.”
While Wilbank’s closing may add fuel to the fire of this debate, he illustrates the challenges we as web publishers of all levels face in our web communications strategies. I highly recommend reading Dylan Wilbanks, “This is my truth, tell me yours” and sharing it with people. This article presents the great challenges in web communications strategies and educates business owners, content providers, and stakeholders on the needs of your existing or future websites. The article also helps us think about how effective our current strategies are; what some of the pitfalls are of outdated websites, improper information architecture, or content; and what the possible ramifications are to our organizations’ business and communications goals.
What are your thoughts on this cartoon and what is the right balance between the “cool” and the user-centric?
This edited post was first published on the MIT WebPub blog on August 6, 2010.