Content or design in higher education web sites?
Posted by Jesse Rodgers on November 07, 2008 at 09:27 AM
A twitter conversation got me rethinking about the concept of content vs design yet again. I am constantly in a battle with having to design an interface for content, actions, and requirements that are either contradicting or simply not known yet. That is hugely frustrating however there are ways to design some general things without knowing the specific content and through a few iterations you get there. That is usually what you are forced to do if you are trying to be truly agile.
In Higher ed, what rules is content or design? My feeling is that it is still content. Aside from Alumni and High School students, the gross majority of consumers of information in the higher ed web space are a captive audience. They are staff, students, and faculty that are simply doing their daily activities in a web space they have to use. Sweating over design and what that design should be may not be a fair trade off over just simple content organization. If content is so important I think the use of Microformats is as well because it allows the higher ed space to open up that useful content to a larger audience and potentially enables their internal audiences to use that content better.
Design (impressive, high end, etc) should be more important for micro-sites that are targeting external audiences. An impressive design can be that ‘wow’ factor that will attract those high school students or make your internal audience more comfortable to find information within your web space. However, content may still be more important in the form of a social media foot print in youtube, twitter, facebook, and other places where you don’t have control over design… only the content.
That is not to say good design isn’t needed but I think if you have only 1 day to spend fixing something in your higher ed web space, fix up the content.
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You also need to look at from the perspective of user goals. There are times when changes to the design may help better support what user’s are trying to do. It could be that the content needed is already there but is not obvious because the visual design doesn’t correctly support its relevance.
This of course is a different kind of Design than what people think of. Pure WOW factor, stuff usually doesn’t help support user goals. So, as you said, that stuff is great for external facing uses. It might not be worth it for internal audiences.
It really comes down to the question of what “fixing up the site” means. Once you know what is broken, you can correctly apply better content or better design to improve it.
@Rob Identify the problem then apply the solution? In Higher Ed? Seriously? ;) You sure we don’t need a committee to spend a year or two on that?
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