Exercise #1
When viewing Northern Illinois University's website, I was tasked with seeing if the website follows the three measures of excellence in technical communication: clarity, accessibility, and professional appearance.
To start, the website is very clear and concise with its information. When the website first opens, it starts off with a slide of upcoming events and important information. The website then has a row for students/future students to apply for enrollment, schedule a tour, explore more programs, and request more information. The video underneath the row shows aerial views of some locations on campus with some statistical information about scholarships and programs directly following.
NIU's website is very accessible in terms of being easy to find in the google search engine, and with the information the website displays. NIU's website is very easy to search on google. All someone needs to do is type NIU website on the search bar, and the website is the first link on the search list. In terms of accessibility of information, if the homepage has an event featured on the slide screen, the website shows the time and date of the event. If you click on the link, it takes you to a page where you can find similar events with the dates, times, and location of each event. There are also tabs at the top of the website with information dedicated specifically for current students, future students, parents, academics, tuition, life on campus, etc. However some of these tabs and links could be used for more than one category. For example, the tuition and academics tabs could be used for the students, parents, and future students tabs. I feel there are some unnecessary tabs that display the same information as other tabs.
Finally, I had to look at the websites professional appearance. I consider the website to be very professional. The website has been put together in a way that I feel properly informs people of the necessary information and where to find more information on these topics. The website does feature a lot of red on the page. I know our main school color is red, but I feel they used to much red on the homepage.
In term of accessibility I think it is a given that you would be able to easily find our website on google. On the other hand, our website does not have tools for those who cannot see or have other issues while online.
ReplyDeleteRight, Lucas. That's the point of asking about accessibility. For so many of us, it's a "new" concept, but for those who are differently abled, it's very familiar. How could the website do better by everyone?
DeletePreston, Good points. But surely there's something you'd change. What would it be?
ReplyDeleteAlso, could you use a slightly larger font and make your text area wider, here, at your blog? (i don't have, let's say, "20 year old" eyes + it's an audience issue -- readability improvements for everyone! :)