Two services that think are very useful for any small business, Blinksale and Basecamp, are now integrated. And it appears this is only the first round:
Soon we’ll be adding support for Basecamp projects and time-tracking, creating the ultimate one-two punch: Get your job done—and get paid.
Now if only Basecamp would lower the cost for time-tracking.
For the first time since the Internet was invented, Carnegie Mellon redesigned their website. Hurray for breaking out of 1996!
I applaud the grand undertaking of overhauling a university website. Having worked at the University of Pittsburgh as a web developer for three years, I understand that this is no small or simple matter.
There are numerous obstacles to overcome, politics to play, and too many people to please. Given my knowledge of those difficulties, I commend the result.
At first glance, the large photography helps the site look interesting. The main area is all Flash, and is a decent use of the technology to pull of subtle effects.
However…
Being the web standards nut the I am, after a minute I dug into the source code. Was I surprised to find an inflexible mishmash of CSS and tables? No. Was I disappointed that my cutting-edge tech school hired someone (Ripple Effects) that doesn’t know how to build without tables? You betcha.
I’m guessing the higher ups at Ripple don’t know about web standards, so the developers are not being forced to any standard, as long as the site appears to work; but the developers have heard enough about this CSS thing to throw in some div tags here and there, but not enough to actually achieve the layout they desired.
The resulting code is a bunch of gobbledygook.
These developers are not clueless, mind you. They’ve got some nifty Flash with XML and CSS going on, they’ve employed SWFObject to display alternate content if visitors don’t have Flash (though their alternate content has some problems), and they’re messing around with DOM scripting.
With all that going on, the lack of full CSS layout is a mystery, but unfortunately not unusual.
Just for fun, try turning off Javascript and images. I know, who does that? Me!
It’s typically a good practice to keep your site light and speedy, like a race car. This site has six overweight passengers crammed inside, and a few sandbags in the trunk for good measure.
While there is an ever increasing trend toward DSL and cable Internet service, people do still use dialup. This site doesn’t care about those people.
The page loads in about 10 seconds for me using cable modem. Not bad, but these numbers are:
As a comparison, the University of Pittsburgh home page, which I built, is 58 kb total: 30 images at 24 kb; 3 scripts at 9 kb.
I’m not holding up Pitt as the standard of excellence.
Yep, it looks better, and it appears to work. But because of the above negligence, the developers failed.
I have some questions about the information architecture. But as I am not privy to the user research and strategy, I cannot fully comment. Though the Post-Gazette article about the launch indicates the guiding principle was people and stories.
I will say that I like that information is chunked in an attempt to make navigating more manageable for visitors. But does it? There’s a look going on, which may be overwhelming.
It’s interesting that Search is the first thing beneath the Carnegie Mellon logo. Does this mean there’s an expectation that visitors will not know how to navigate the site and will rely on searching to find the content they seek?
I feel a bit sorry for News, tucked away as it is beneath all the navigation, making room for the themes. I wonder if people will really submit theme ideas.
I also wonder about the font sizes, especially on the subpages. With all the large images and large main navigation links, the body text does not appear very readable (but who reads?). And check out the line length on the Research page.
“In what many are calling Web 2.0, companies, nonprofits and universities are spending billions of dollars redesigning their Web sites, with varying degrees of success.”
That’s from the Post-Gazette article. Read it again. Did you catch the revelation? Web 2.0 is about spending billions to redesign websites, and possibly utterly failing.
I’m harsh, I know. Overall, I’m very happy to see the site has finally been updated. It’s a huge improvement, and a step in the right direction.
I just hope it doesn’t take another 10 years before the site is updated.
Over the summer, during my design fundamentals training, I had a bit of an argument with the instructor of one of my software training sessions about table-based web design versus CSS web design.
The argument was positive, however, in that it ended with the instructor, Cheryl Riedel, offering to have me be a guest lecturer for the web design course she teaches.
Yesterday, that offer came into fruition.
The focus of the lecture was web design process. The students are about to embark on a web site redesign project, and Cheryl wanted me to emphasize the work that goes into projects before any graphic design takes place.
I used Manchester Bidwell Corporation as a case study, as that is a site that I am currently working on (in fact, it just went live—really, just now). I also touched upon a couple other projects, including the International Transplant Nurses Society, and the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Anthropology. Before and after shots were quite effective, I thought.
Something the students were surprised to learn is the lack of strategy that clients often bring to web design projects (at least, in my experience). One even called it unbelievable, to which I full-heartedly agreed.
Seeing the deficiencies in the larger picture, i.e., the lack of strategy, is where I found opportunity to embrace design. In helping clients define their strategy, you are helping them design their service or business and how they interact with the people seeking to learn more information about them through the website. This is actually something I didn’t realize until going to CMU, and something the Emergence conference, which focused on service design, helped me see.
What I told the students was that design is much more than taking a website that looks poor and applying a new visual design that makes it look prettier. While this is something a lot of web design firms will do, it does not address the bigger picture of which the visual design is merely a component—though a necessary and important one.
I stressed the value of listening to the client describe the problem, while also keeping in mind that the defined problem may not be the real problem. For instance, my clients have never said they had no strategy until I inferred that they didn’t and asked.
Also, I emphasized the importance of defining the strategy and goals up front, then moving to content collection and information architecture, then to visual design, as getting the first part right makes the rest a lot easier.
One student asked about the need to educate clients. Another asked about how much of one’s personal design aesthetics go into the design.
Questions meant they were listening (I hope), so I felt I did a decent job for my first time. I was actually surprised that I used up the two hours and strung together a fairly cohesive presentation without too much forethought.
Cheryl seemed pleased, and I talked to a couple students who are in my interaction and visual interface design class, and they said I did well. So cool. It was fun, and I would not mind doing it again.
Though my voice did suffer for a bit afterwards. Note: bring water when lecturing.
Shaun Inman, a major force in sIFR, the man behind Mint, and a very nice guy whom I had the pleasure of talking to earlier this year, once again redesigned his site. And it’s damn interesting change.
While his process of designing in the browser first and then going to Photoshop for only minimal pixel art ain’t much different than the very site you are reading (I’m so ahead of my time), his algorithm for color coding content according to its relationship to the present is quite original.
I found it intriguing that he is thinking about the proliferation and inevitable obsolescence of content on the Internet and the challenge of communicating relevancy of information to visitors that may not know the whole history of development who happen upon older techniques or opinions.
I’m not sure this is the best answer to that question, but it is a fascinating solution, worthy of consideration.
The process book for my data visualization project is due tomorrow. I initially finished it on Friday.
On Saturday, I printed a draft and showed it to someone. Too much white space, he said.
Six weeks into design school, I simply cannot ignore a comment like “too much white space.” So I spent time on Saturday and Sunday resizing images, adjusting type, and changing the layout.
After each iteration I thought: I can make this better. However, this may be a lesson in knowing when to say it’s good enough, and not perfect, because at some point it just has to be done.
And that’s where I am right now. Yet to be printed.
I am a senior designer for Nokia Design, and have a masters of interaction design from the School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University. More about »