Design Issues Review
There has been quite a bit of positive reaction to the design. I believe the comments tell us that we are headed in the right direction. I wish that we could put the entire site in front of you now–it would answer a lot of the questions that you raise. For example,
Q “I think the picture used in the background of the red bar at the top of the site should be continually rotated among a bunch of pictures to keep the site fresh.”
A The images in the header do rotate through many examples of Cornell’s architectural details.
Q?”…but like 60 different pictures of the same caliber and feel and brightness and that sort of thing that the server uploads according to the time or something.”
A Within the first month of the site’s launch there will be around 80 pictures that rotate through the home page. Though we are starting with student pictures, there will be more images in the future of campus views, architecture, and our local landscape.
Q?”I don?t see any space for the images of our beautiful campus, and I think there should be some.”
A There are currently hundreds of images in the site, many of which depict the campus. And as I said above, the home page will include the campus in its “campaign space” after launch.
Q?”A link to CUinfo on the home page.”
A Currently on the bottom of each page.
Q?”…We have many more facilities all over the world than just in Ithaca, NY, and Doha such as Arecibo and Shoals. Why are these not on the map?”
A We have developed a map that shows Cornell in the world. You just have to wait to see it. Also, Arecibo, Shoals, Cornell in Washington, the Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, NY, and Cornell in Rome will appear in greater detail–they are featured along side the Cornell’s “major campuses”.
Q?”Visually, Cornell?s architecture, better and worse, and its setting are distinctive, so please drop those boring and fungible student photos.”
A Please excuse our use of actual Cornell University students in this design. We are in the process of trying to find some USC students.
Seriously, on the design derivation issue, I have to weigh in. I must say that I am a bit disappointed in the level of design criticism from a few of our readers. Looking a bit deeper into WPG’s long design history would reveal the following sites:
Alumni and Friends Library Access (2002) http://alumni.library.cornell.edu/
The Education Department (2003) http://www.education.cornell.edu/
BioMedical Engineering Program (2003) http://www.bme.cornell.edu/
JSL Inauguration Site (2003) http://www.inauguration.cornell.edu/
For each of these you’ll note the navbar at the top, big pictures in the middle and 3 column approach (aside from the Inauguration site) in the lower third of the page. All of these were done before the USC site was released. During the initial design phase of this project, we spent a great deal of time looking at a large number of sites, including USC and Harvard. We agree that USC has a great university web site. And they should be proud of it. Still, the new Cornell site is no more a rip off of the USC site or Harvard site than these sites are indebted to Cornell’s Alumni and Friends Library Access site.
Here’s what took the cake: “Guess you get what you pay for. From what I understand, the designers are untrained. To be derivative is to be expected.”
A note: I will put up the work of Cornell’s Web Production Group against any design team anywhere. I spent from 1998-2003 helping to grow this team. This is their first crack at designing the cornell.edu site, and I believe that you as a community are going to be very happy with the results. Not just for this upcoming release, but for the releases over the next 3 years.
A request: Please consider the work and dedication of the staff at Cornell before you fire off remarks that may be flippant about their life’s work. We must work together as a community to improve our communications efforts.
It is important to be able to exercise the freedom to critique and to be critical, but please balance this freedom with the responsibility of maintaining a cordial and professional atmosphere. It will help everyone to focus on the task at hand.
And with that, back into the fray! Thank you all for participating in this incredible conversation.
- Thomas Richardson, Cornell Director of Web Communications
As chair of the Image Committee of Student Assembly, I must commend you efforts. While I have shared certain comments in private, I strongly believe that this presents a vast improvement over the current site. However, upon seeing the Biomedical Engineering site for the first time — which is first class — I must reiterate my suggestion that a deeper grey fill the bottom section of the new site. This should ameliorate any concerns about similarities with other schools who shall remain nameless.
Second, I believe that the admissions links should feature strong architectural photos of the individual schools, as I believe Cornell’s beauty is one of its strongest “selling points.”
Peace,
Peter
TR, thanks for the response to the comments. I would certainly agree with you that some of the comments fall less into the category of constructive criticism than others. I know that the vast majority of us think the new site is awesome and we greatly appreciate all your hard work!
With regard to the student photos: I think that people raise a good point. Cropped photos of happy-go-lucky students are probably not as effective as views of campus, or students engaged in campus activities. Especially if you use photos of USC students!
Otherwise, I really can’t wait to see it come online. The 16th, you say?
Thank you for continually adressing the issues brought up by this blog. I myself am a little disappointed in the amount of design criticism and elitist comments so far made. I am personally very excited about the design, and I see no problem with “Any Person, Any Study” (It’s our history, and for a prospective student to see it and think Cornell is some sort of community college is ridiculous). Obviously, the photos of Cornell students to be featured haven’t been made public yet, but I also think it would be much more valuable to have students engaged in campus activites rather than merely posing (this might already be the case)
Otherwise, I also can’t wait to see it come online. Please don’t get discouraged by the many negative comments, you’re doing a great job.
We really appreciate all the hard work, because the new sites are amazing and wonderful!!!
I am curious as to the development status of the “search” feature interface and if this is the final look it will have on Aug 16th. It has in recent years become quite the vogue to sport no capitalization on personal blogs, and even more professional websites (such as MIT) carry a non capitalization theme. Although my personal opinion is that the popularity of such a nonchalant web design style is astonishing, it is important to maintain it as a theme. It seems rather disjointed having professional themed text (mainly the use of capital letters) for the entire site and then switch to a different style and (it appears, but I can’t tell 100%) font size for the search. Not only do I suggest that the text retain the continuity of the website, but also that ‘pages’, ‘people’ and ‘more options’ have the same level of eye-catching appeal that the other items in the lower gray bar have. I am curious as to the development status of the “search” feature interface and if this is the final look it will have on Aug 16th. It has in recent years become quite the vogue to sport no capitalization on personal blogs, and even more professional websites (such as MIT) carry a non capitalization theme. Although my personal opinion is that the popularity of such a nonchalant web design style is astonishing, it is important to maintain it as a theme. It seems rather disjointed having professional themed text (mainly the use of capital letters) for the entire site and then switch to a different style and (it appears, but I can’t tell 100%) font size for the search. Not only do I suggest that the text retain the continuity of the website, but also that ‘pages’, ‘people’ and ‘more options’ have the same level of eye-catching appeal that the other items in the lower gray bar have.
Hahaha: “We are in the process of trying to find some USC students.”
You guys are great. I must note that just don’t include the faces of students smiling, etc. Any college can do that. I trust you know what you are doing.
Everyone, keep in mind that this site will continually be developed until 2007. I can’t wait to see the new site.
*inlcude _only_ the faces of students
Please Please help the Mechanical Engineering website…all university pages should have this style!
NOT this one: http://www.mae.cornell.edu/
TR, on that web link you have to the Eduation Department, I have to say, the old ‘big red box’ looks really great on the burnt orange background…. *vomit*. I hope it’s replaced by the new logo ASAP!
Speaking of, will there be any preview, or clue, as to the new logo before its launch? Please? If you email me a screen shot I promise I won’t show it to anyone.
I absolutely agree with comment #8. As a student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, I can honestly say that I am embarrassed by our department’s (MAE) website. If you find time in your busy schedules, could you please give me an early birthday present by getting rid of that “swirl?” On a more serious level, what is the plan for department websites to get makeovers? Some departments have web administrators, but others do not. How do these unlucky departments get help?
Also, I would like to say that I think the Web Design Team is doing a great job and I too look forward to the launch.
Wow awesome blog entry. That really puts things in perspective. Some more random thoughts of mine about the page.
How about an alumnus of the day page somewhere? Perhaps on the alumni page even.
Also, I agree with an earlier comment that Library should be renamed to Resources.
Also, something that would be really cool would be a Cornell wiki. In fact if you don’t put one up I may just have to make one myself, except that I’d prefer not to pay for my own hosting of it. Oh yeah, and news in RSS form.
Will you change the College of Arts and Sciences and particularily the econ department websites in the near future? Please let me know. But can’t say enough how awesome the new webs are.
I must say that I am fairly impressed by the designs for the new website. I often thought during the previous year that Cornell should really re-design its website, as many other universities have done in recent years. The new designs are really much nicer than the existing one, and the use of a darker red is much more soothing to the eyes than what appears on the current website. I personally think Columbia has one of the best websites (that was fairly recently re-designed, I believe), because of the prominent central picture rotating images of the campus and NYC. It would really be nice to see something similar on the Cornell site. (Although the current site does have rotating images, they are fairly small, and often somewhat boring- I remember one image of elephants being hosed in the vet school. Although an amusing picture, there are certainly better views of Cornell and the surrounding area. Another showed the football field at dawn; it seemed a fairly drab shot, that could be replaced with something far more vibrant) Anyway, keep up the good work!
Will you be utilizing Macromedia FLASH technology anywhere within the site? Take a look at http://business.aem.cornell.edu/ – check out the flash intro “The Adventure Starts Here.” As an AEM major, I like the look of our site.
I too appreciate Thomas’ and the WPG’s excellent work on this project. This is a huge undertaking. As I indicated in an earlier posting, I’m especially impressed that they have opened this process up for public comment.
I was saddened to read so many unhelpful comments of the last few days, but I think we can disregard many of them as rantings of immaturity. If they felt strongly enough, they wouldn’t share their feelings anonymously.
I was wondering how “deep” this redesign initiative will go. It was mentioned that the Admissions website will also be redesigned, but will each college or school have a redesign or at least be reevaluated? Does OWC even have the jurisdiction to affect change at that level? It would be ideal if each college and department can have the professional look of the BME or Undergraduate Business site. But I think, at the very least, a notice should be given to each college and department to replace the old Cornell logo with the new one when the time comes. I hope the redesign of cornell.edu will spur reevaluations of dated college websites like Arts and Science and Engineering by the powers that be.
Nice work. I just think that we might consider the following:
An athletics link on the front page
A “quick facts” page in the “About” section
What about a promotional video that could be posted on the site? There are a lot of interesting things going on at Cornell that could be best portrayed through interviews of faculty, students, etc. It’s one thing to show pictures, but videos are often more effective.
As with Harvard’s site, I think we should constantly put up pictures of professors during conferences, in the lab, or prominent alumni in the public eye. Something like that can really display the far-reaching hand of Cornell after graduation and beyond the ivory tower.
I think the tower is made of stone from a regional quarry, not ivory. But it would be cool if we had a giant tower made from parts of endangered species.
Just kidding. I was going to agree with #17… there definitely should be an initiative to encourage (mandate) that the individual colleges hire TR to redo their websites also. Please start with arts & sciences.
Oh and once you’re done updating all the colleges’ websites, please nuke the CU Alumni Magazine website and replace it with something more fitting. Here’s an example of a nice online magazine:
http://www.olin.wustl.edu/discovery/
Okay that’s all for today. My boss is mad that I’m on the internet all the time.
This is kind of an irreverant look at Ivy mottos taken from Ivybasketball.com which might help put that aspect of our discussion in perspective:
1. Harvard — Veritas (Truth). Short, simple, and unusually straightforward for Harvard. What’s not to like?
2. Yale — Lux et Veritas (Light and Truth). Not bad, but it seems a little redundant.
3. Brown — In Deo Speramus (In God Is Our Hope). Powerful and direct, though you have to wonder how many Brown students adhere to it today.
4. Penn — Leges Sine Moribus Vanae (Laws Without Morals Are Bogus). A noble sentiment, but it sounds more appropriate for a law school than a whole university. In fact, it would make a good slogan for Yale Law School: “What’s the point of going to law school if you can’t drink at Mory’s?”
5. Cornell — I Would Found an Institution Where Any Person Can Find Instruction in Any Study. The use of English is refreshingly unpretentious for the Ivy League, and it’s admirably gender-inclusive (Cornell was co-educational from the start). Still, it is kind of wordy, and whenever someone asks you what your alma mater’s motto is, it takes five minutes to explain it.
6. Princeton — Dei Sub Numine Viget (Under God’s Will She Flourishes). OK but bland and a bit too self-congratulatory.
7. Dartmouth — Vox Clamantis in Deserto (A Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness). I’m sure there’s a moving Bible story associated with this, but it sounds like they’re saying that if you go to Dartmouth, you’ll be stuck in the middle of nowhere and end up going crazy.
8. Columbia — In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lumen (In Your Light We Will See the Light, or something). In all the years I’ve been associated with Columbia, nobody has ever explained this to me adequately. I’m told that it’s from one of the Psalms, and it’s addressed to God, and I suppose it has a deep spiritual meaning, but you’re still basically saying, “We’ll see light where there is light.” Of course we will!
Unfortunately, Faber College from “Animal House” (“Knowledge is Good”) is not in the Ivy League, or they would have finished first.
“Knowledge is Good” –Brilliant! Forgot about that old movie.
Didn’t Princeton adopt a second motto, “In The Nation’s Service,” after Woodrow Wilson said that? Maybe that’s something CU could do… have its historical motto but create a modern adaptation? Just a thought.
I’ve noticed that out of the Ivy school websites: Columbia, Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown have rotating pictures in the “picture space” of their home page. Brown and Yale have captions that explain each picture, while Columbia and Dartmouth do not. In each of these cases, the pictures consist of architectural details, snapshots students and faculty on their daily routines, and sweeping views of campus and surrounding neighborhood. I think these pictures do a great job of highlighting the atmosphere of each school, particularly in the campus and architecture shots. Although I also noticed that none had pictures of the winter…
Mr. Richardson said that there will be ~80 pictues cycling through our “picture space.” I hope most of these picture are of the category described above and few are of students posing with test tubes. The more I think about it, the more I like the “quiet dignity” (no slogan) approach to advertising our school.
Sorry, but I forgot to mention that I love the “Cornell Image: History” photos that are cycling through the current home page and the old historic Cornell virtual tour that we had. I hope both will find a place in the new website, perhaps in the About and Tour sections.
To comment #15: the only professional websites that really make use of Flash are sites promoting movies and music artists. Site designers usually shy away from Flash on most other websites because it’s not viewable in all browsers, and if a person does not have the Flash plug-in, it looks ugly and can make the page difficult (if not impossible) to browse.
I agree with comment section 26. I love the historic Cornell picture, and I hope it will have place in the new websites.
I think something that immediately draws potential applicants who cannot otherwise see the school for themselves is an online tour. Granted, Cornell does have one, I still think it can be further developed. Although Brown’s is pretty bland, I think it has a pretty good idea: LOTS of pictures and plenty of commentary.
I personally think that our virtual tour is one of (if not the) best I’ve seen. It’s very easy to use, and has a lot of 360 degree images (although noticably absent are the Engineering Quad, law library reading room (which I think beats the reading rooms at Harvard and Princeton many times over) and Sage hall.
Agreeing with comment #30, I suggest that this resource be further advertised on the main site if possible. The virtual tour website (http://www.explore.cornell.edu/tour_home.cfm) is one of the most professional and aesthetically pleasing pages on Cornell’s server (and I’ll second the supposition of it being the best online tour among any school). The time spent on content development must have been staggering, however, it was well spent; thoroughly exploring the site gives a fantastic feeling of having been to campus. I hope that the ‘virtual tour’ link under ‘Visiting Cornell’ redirects directly to the fore listed website.
I agree on tour, although I hope it can continue to be improved and expanded. A direct link to it on front page is very important. One small quibble, now that we have this unusual public forum, the phrase introducing the natural beauty part of that virtual tour should certainly be “Cornellians consider themselves fortunate…” and not the word “lucky” which connotes chance or randomness.
I personally think we need a section called “Giving to Cornell”. This way we can raise more endowment and funds. Penn and Northwestern did very well in that area. Also, would you please help update all the department websites.
I think the explore Cornell site http://explore.cornell.edu/search/results.cfm?qtvrpano=yes is extremly well done and professional.
And I also agree with getting more pictures of Cornellians showing their school spirit such as wearing Cornell Red and cheering at a hockey game, eating the Cross Country Gourment Dinner at North Star or watching the Dragon Day parade in the snow, something uniquely Cornell. I am sure the new website is going to be one of the best ever.
how about some pictures of Slope Day =)
Hi,
I happened to visit your university website to research a course of my specific interest, and was drawn towards the redesign initiative web pages. As someone who has worked in the web portal industry for two years, I would like to say that the new design possesses clean-cut finesse, but could do with some improvement. I am not able to articulate specific feedback pointers as of now, but will post comments as soon as I have them
I am making a strictly “going-forward” feature suggestion. If I recollect right, I noticed an interesting method in which employee testimonials were presented on the Goldman Sachs (or is it IBM? my memory fails me
website. Prospective recruits, in the process of their job hunt, opt for a profile match with featured current employees, and then proceed to read diary-like accounts of their functions. For example, since my area of specialization is communication (corporate, internal et al), I could visit this section, select a broad job function from a ready pull-down menu, and enter specific keywords to dovetail my search. Generic areas would include communications, public relations, marketing, sales et al, and keywords included marketing communications, corporate communications, internal communications et al. The search result would yield names of employees within that job functions, and an episodic “day-in-the-life” account. This strategy could be followed to feature testimonials of current students in each department. As a prospective student, I would simply enter keywords relevant to my course, find students that take the course currently, read accounts of classroom experiences, projects et al, and even get in direct touch with them. While this seems a mammoth exercise, a simple precursor would be to have student profiles more actively featured on department web pages (interview of the week, “This week, we spoke to…” et al). If such a feature is already part of separate student community web pages, it should be more prominently featured on the website. I know for a fact that Harvard relies heavily on “day-in-the-life” accounts to buttress plain vanilla student information.
This has been a long-winded post, but thanks a lot for your time
Aruna
Congratulations on the upcoming redesign. It’s clear that a great deal of strategic thinking and research went into the decision-making, and the Cornell web team should be proud of their work. I look forward to seeing the site go live.
Derivative? I don’t think so.
I for one think the new site looks great. But, like everyone I have some suggestions. For instance, if the homepage allowed access to a free MMPOG based on the book Fool on the Hill, the site would be alot better. Also, if there was a webcam on President Lehman all the time, I think this would generate interest. Also if you could download some free MP3s from the homepage, that be great too. Oh, and some news on celebrities would be great.
I’m looking forward to the new site as well. I also agree with another comment that the Cornell athletics web site needs a major overall! The Cornell Athletics web pages lacks the better content and user interfaces seen on other Ivy and college athletic web pages. There is very little if any information about the Cornell Football Association alumni group, game day photos, recruiting information, player bios, football histor, football camps, etc. which other college athletic web sits routinely make available.
Quick question for anyone who might have the answer…is the image committee also going to replace the Cornell Athletics Logo (The Bear and The C)? I for one would much prefer the Shield…
In response to post 40, the Athletics logo should be changed at all. It’s our mascot, why should we change it? Princeton has their Tiger logo, Brown has their bear logo, Columbia has their lion logo, Yale has their bulldog logo etc…Athletics logos should not be confused with the logo of the school.
I’m certainly not confuing the athletics logo with the school logo, I’m merely curious as to whether both logos are under the jursidiction of the same Image Committee.
The Image Committee does not determine the university’s logo. Those decisions are made by the administration.
Just noticed something else I like so I wanted to point it out: the faint image in the background of the red banner on top of each page. Lends nice texture and depth to that field. Definitely should keep that element in the final product.
On the Columbia website, you can click on a link called “about this site,” that takes you to a page where you can see all the archived rotating front page images, and even submit your own. I think this may be a nice addition to the Cornell homepage, and may prevent thousands of people from clicking reload over and over again in an attempt to view every possible image.
I think the following web flash “start the journey” is extremly well done and professional, it conveys the message clearly. Maybe we can try something similar for admissions at Cornell. http://www.law.columbia.edu/prosp_students/jd_prog
Evening Update:
Q.8 ….Please help the Mechanical Engineering website all university pages ….
A.8 Web Production Group (WPG) would like to work with every unit across campus for their web services needs. WPG had a conversation with MAE few weeks back regarding the MAE web site redesign. At this time MAE has decided to move with another vendor/option.
Q.17 …. It would be ideal if each college and department can have the professional look of the BME or Undergraduate Business site…
A.17 WPG is working with a lot of units and colleges across campus and is helping them enhance their web site. If your unit/college needs design, development & hosting services, please contact WPG at wpg-support@cornell.edu.
Q.22 ….please nuke the CU Alumni Magazine website and replace it with something….
A.22 WPG is working with Alumni Affairs and Development on a long-term project involving design, development and hosting services. As part-I of this project, each class will be provided its own web environment to host its site.
Q.29 ….I think something that immediately draws potential applicants who cannot otherwise see the school for themselves is an online tour….
A.29 As some of you know, Cornell already has some virtual tours featured on Explore Cornell web site. Explore Cornell is a WPG pilot project to showcase best of Cornell using latest tools and technologies. WPG is working with other units across campus to enhance and expand the content offered at Explore Cornell web site.
Q.33 …I personally think we need a section called “Giving to Cornell”. …
A.33 ‘Giving to Cornell’ is top section on alumni.cornell web site. And new site will have direct link to alumni.cornell website.
Team http://www.cornell.edu,
In reviewing some of the content in this blog and the process involved in redesigning cornell.edu it reminds me of what we, here at UCSF (University of California, San Francisco) recently went through in the redesign of http://www.ucsf.edu. If there’s one morsel of advice that I would like to offer you from my experience on this project it’s this: Try to use this opportunity to ‘brand/identify’ all web pages as Cornell first & foremost in an visually obvious and consistent way. And if this means allocating 20, 40 or 60 pixels to a logo area/branding banner at the top of each page, then I would strongly advise doing this (and over time, possibly even attempting to make “it” a requirement/standard on all Cornell web pages).
My experience in this area comes from a background in branding at Gap Inc. here in SF and more recently at UCSF, learning to understand how large institutions grapple with web identity. We, here at UCSF addressed issues of branding our web pages consistently by including a 30 pixel web banner at the top of our pages (see: http://www.ucsf.edu). It’s available in three colors: Black/Gray and Teal (primary graphic identity colors) and it’s the only branding element required on UCSF web pages.
I have no idea what the new http://www.cornell.edu redesigned pages looks like, but to attempt to use this opportunity to develop visual standards for Cornell on the web I believe, would be visionary on your part. Not only to advance the image of your stellar academic institution in this medium, but to also give you tools that will assist in harnessing the many different variations of Cornell’s image on the web.
When reviewing the page designs, a question I would ask you to pose to yourselves is: Are these pages branded as Cornell first and foremost? And if so, you’ve done an amazing job and I wish you well in the remaining lap. It’s been great to read the dialogue on your blog regarding the redesign of http://www.cornell.edu and thank you for allowing me to share a similar experience with you.
Sincerely,
Martha Fitzgerald
…………………………..……………………………
Senior Designer :: Print/Web
UCSF Public Affairs
UCSF :: University of California, San Francisco
t 415 476 3257
f 415 476 3541
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http://www.ucsf.edu
As some one who graduated from Cornell 23 years ago and to this day still identifies intimately with the superior education it gave me in my early life, I applaud each and every person who has contributed to this image process. What you have done so far is fantastic, and your current plans to push for improving classroom size will motivate real change at Cornell. Keep up the incredible work!