Duke Web Site Redesign Blog :: Oh, Boy!

Ah, yes. Sweet happiness. You know how I love these college Web site redesign efforts via blog. Constantin Basturea kindly tipped me off to this one. He writes, “http://redesign.dukenews.duke.edu/ (via CollegeWebEditor) I know you’re a fan :)” And, yes. I am. Thanks, Constantin. And, thank you Karine (collegewebeditor.com), too.

Welcome “Redesigning the Duke.edu Website” to the college redesign social network. Good for them!

I made quite the goofball of myself with many posts about Cornell’s redesign project. I even nominated them for a Bob. They did pretty well, but their focus/audience was so narrow/niche, they couldn’t quite beat the broader sites.

So, could “Redesigning the Duke.edu Website” be my next cause celebre? Well, the title of the blog could use some work. However, it is quite literal. No confusing it with any other topic.

Thus far, the blog has 10 posts and Whoa! 141 comments. Pretty good startup. The Office of News and Communications (ONC) is moderating the posts. That isn’t unreasonable. Hey, it is a university site. No need to have students writing their off-color comments in there. Oh, students would never do that now, would they?

The three posts that garnered the most interest so far are - not surprisingly - the ones with examples of the pending design.

Mock-up: Design 2 Homepage (59 comments)
Mock-up: Design 1 Secondary Page (29 comments)
Mock-up: Design 1 Homepage (19 comments)

Among the interesting comments? “I’d like to see a mock up of #2 with images unrelated to science and technology. Although I’m an engineer myself, I think it portrays too much ‘nerd’ and not enough humanities.”

If nothing else, these comments will aid the design group in forming questions for any focus / demo groups they may wish to put together before launching the new site. Previously, most of these observations probably came from IT pros and selected administration and faculty members. They might have thrown in a few students along the way. At Cornell, parents and alumni also joined in the discussions. Hope that happens for Duke, too. I did find one alum / parent post already.

This blog, by virtue of the comments and participation so far, is focusing more on style & design - user friendly GUI - and not so much the aura and history of the school. Much of the Cornell.edu blog had some very entertaining comments about the school and how it should be portrayed in the portal’s design. This may well surface as the Duke blog is still young. Color (ah, Duke blue) has already surfaced, too. My experience in Web design has shown that color choice seems to be the primary concern of so many users.

This will be an interesting site to follow. I promise not to over post about this one. OK, well I’ll ‘try‘ to not over post about it. Can’t help it. I just think this is a great way to involve people in a conversation. It is especially interesting to see at places where, strangely, these kinds of decisions are ‘not’ ususally opened up to the core stakeholder groups. Involving your audience up front? Go figure. What a concept.