April 25, 2006
Higher Ed - Is there anything else like it?
As we start in on designing navigation, I've been trying to think of other types of organizations that offer similar services so I can take a look at how they're using the web. I'm thinking we might be stuck inside a "higher education" box in thinking about our web site, in which case it would be useful to look at enterprises that offer the same sort of "service" as a college or university. I'd like to be able to see how similar organizations use the web to support their work.
So far I haven't come up with much. One thought is that we are a destination - someplace people want to know more about and visit - so I started looking at web sites for travel destinations:
The thing about travel destination sites is that they are not designed for people who live in these places, but rather for people who are considering visiting.
I also looked at museums, thinking they are educational destinations:
These are closer, but still they are outward-facing sites geared toward an external audience. I expect they have some kind of intranet to facilitate the day-to-day workings of the organization.
I also looked at these organizations that seemed similar to higher education in some respect (listed here in no particular order):
- World Health Organization
- UNICEF
- IBM
- National Cancer Institute
- New York Academy of Sciences
- NASA
- Library of Congress
- Earth Institute at Columbia University
Great sites, but none addresses the specialized needs of people who inhabit the place or organization, whereas almost every higher ed site I've visited does. Hum... do they know something we don't know?
What do you think - is there any other enterprise like higher education? And should schools attempt to serve all audiences with a single "home page?"
Comments
I would argue that schools should not try to serve all audiences with a single home page. The reality is that the brand of the institution is complex and the points of emphasis change as you explain that brand to different groups. Trying to create one site that serves all of them at once results in a generic, bland presentation which does not represent the school well.
In addition, the audiences you serve need to be ranked in order of importance so content and design decisions can be made with that ranking in mind.
Your plan states that "the needs of internal and external visitors are not mutually exclusive" and I disagree with this assessment. They are mutually exclusive in that building a navigational scheme that will serve the needs of all audiences including all internal constituencies leads to an overly complicated structure that uses redundant language and confuses visitors.
Posted by: Geoff Bronner | May 1, 2006 06:06 PM
Great points, Geoff. The more time we spend working through the navigation and architecture, the more it's clear that some of the needs overlap and some just don't. We're planning to build the main site to that overlap and build a new section called "Inside Dartmouth" that is more for the day-to-day needs of people who live and work here.
Posted by: Sarah Horton | May 5, 2006 03:46 PM