OPTIMISING THE DEPARTMENT'S WEB SITE

This account will grow as the design process continues. New readers can start at the top, and with luck will find a comprehensible story; old readers start here.

Where we began.

The Computer Science department's web site has been fairly static for a year or two now. The format laid down some time ago by Julian ( mainly ) has evolved occasionally when new information had to be incorporated in the site, but the basic structure has not changed.

This is a good thing, provided that the structure is sound. People can get to know the site, rely on URLs persisting long enough to be useful, and generally become confident that everything works.

We ( Webmaster and Information Coordinator ) have both been concerned that the site, while containing a great deal of useful and valuable information, does not work as well as it should. To illustrate the point, pretend that you are a prospective student in some distant place who is keen to come here to study Computer Science. It's fairly easy to reach our front page from the University site - but what do you do once there ? The only obvious link to follow is the TEACHING button, but that leads only to information useful to currently enrolled students. You can find material from the HANDBOOK button, but it's buried amid lots of detail that you don't understand and don't want to know just yet.

First step.

We wanted to find a better way. To help us do so, we established three experimental front pages (1 2 3) with which we could experiment, and which couls be the focus for comments and feedback. Once the first trial version was there, we asked people to have a look, and let us ( Webmaster or Information coordinator ) know what they thought about it.

We gave these comments to guide people's responses :

The main modification is the button group on the right and the addition of logos from various research groups.
Note that the research logos are taken from their respective homepages and resize to the necessary size, so expect some distortion.
A new font type had been used for the newer buttons, which one do you prefer?
The new buttons link to brief descriptions of the various new "areas", so click on them.
This is mainly a reorganisation of the website and not about cosmetic changes (yet).

Notice that we wish to change the existing structures as little as we can, so that URLs are not affected unless absolutely necessary. The front page is linked in the main to existing pages, or to further experimental pages complementing the existing structure if such are required.

The responses to the survey.

We received several comments, which were not really conclusive about anything. You can look at a sort of commented summary if you wish. There was some evidence of a wish for a less fussy front page, and that the addition of research group logos was a good idea.

More significantly, perhaps, people commented on the content even though we'd asked them not to. We can take a hint - next we'll try to work out what the important things are, and adapt the page to fit that.

Vincent Chung and Alan Creak,
June, 1999.

Go to Information;
Go to Computer Science.