Chapter 2 write/design

For the Chapter 2 write/design assignment I chose to examine the mobile views of three university websites. These included the WSU housing and dining site, University of Washington home page, and the Washington Adventist University home page (I stumbled on it while fat-thumbing the WSU page) all viewed from an iPhone 5 running IOS 7. These are all share the same genre of university websites. The WSU page does fit somewhat differently into the genre since as the home page of a specific unit rather than a university home page, it effectively acts as a subset of the genre. However, I know that it uses a new template and design model that WSU is adopting across their entire web presence and I was interested in reviewing that new interface. I believe it is close enough to the other two sites to still make a valid comparison.

The WSU housing and dining was the best experience and most effective between all three sites. A banner across the top quickly identifies the author as Washington State University Housing and Residence Life. The template uses responsive web design to scale the existing web page to a smaller screen size. The navigation folds into a single banner underneath the header with the three line “Sandwich” symbol and the word “NAVIGATION” all in caps. This makes it easily identifiable and accessible. Beneath that are centered several commonly selected items, all as long full screen width buttons with text labels. All of this is laid out in black and crimson. The alignment and proximity of all the elements are laid out so that they are easy to find and comfortable to use. Beneath these elements a list of videos appear in a two column block. The icons for the first two videos are fully visible with part of the next row peaking above the end of the scroll line. The icons used for the video placeholders provide additional visual interest and the second partial row indicates to the user that there is additional content below.

The text of the various link and navigation elements make the audience specific and easily recognizable. This page is for current or potential students of WSU to explore housing options and to interact with the housing department if they already have a contract with one of the university-owned facilities. Right from the home page there are easy ways to pay your bill, fill out an application, or look up information about pricing, floor plans, and view videos of the various facilities. This is a highly successful mobile view for this website.

The second site, the University of Washington Home Page, is another example of adaptive design. However, this time as it adapts down to the smaller mobile screen size it focuses on a digital slideshow. From the mobile view this made it unclear on a few points. Since all I saw was a single photo, I couldn’t tell exactly who the intended audience was. In fact, the first photo that popped up for me was related to football, and since there wasn’t enough other types of information or obvious navigational clues, I thought I had stumbled into an athletics sub-site, rather than the top-level home page. In addition, there wasn’t anything on the page that gave an indication that there was more information available in the slideshow or further down the page. Furthermore, once I realized I could swipe to switch images in the slideshow, it started causing twitch in the interface that made it impossible to navigate. Overall, I found this to be an ineffective mobile view. The organization made it so audience and access to information was unclear, and the user interface was buggy and distracting.

The third site, Washington Adventist University, merely scales down the homepage to the smaller-sized screen. In some respects, this works ok. The site’s organization is still there so audience and purpose are easily determined. However, many of the textual elements are too small to read and there are too many items for a smaller mobile interface. This makes navigation difficult as well as any detailed look into the content. Still, of the three sites, it is second, because it is functional and purpose and audience are apparent, whereas the UW site completely breaks down.