Vanderbilt website redesign – 2010
The Office of University Web Communications has been working on a new look for the Vanderbilt homepage and top-levels pages, set to launch the week of May 17. We’re once again using this blog to share our designs with you, the Vanderbilt community. We hope you take some time to look at our designs, read our insights into why we’re doing what we’re doing, and give us your feedback. The Vanderbilt website is your website, and we value your opinion.
PLEASE NOTE: The only second-level page built at this time is “About.” ALL CONTENT IS FILLER AT THIS POINT; the captions do not match the photos, and the links in the drop downs and second level are not complete. Extensive browser testing is currently in progress. Therefore, recommended browsers for previewing these beta pages are Firefox, Safari, Opera or IE7+.
Please share your feedback in the Comments section by April 9.
Why are we doing this?
It’s been almost three years since our last major redesign, although we’ve made plenty of tweaks and improvements along the way. The Web and our usage of it has evolved since then and now is the time to ensure our primary Web presence reflects that evolution.
If you’d like to see how the Vanderbilt homepage has developed from its inception in 1994 to the present, take a look at our very own wayback machine.
How did we decide to change what we’re changing?
We studied our analytics and our search engine results; conducted focus groups with faculty, staff and students; studied competitors’ best practices; and listened to feedback from our different audiences.
What’s Changing
Navigation
There are two main shifts in navigation –
- We’ve reduced the number of main links to help focus the user
- We’ve created mega dropdowns that include more links that give the user quicker access to our most-visited sites
There are now three main navigational areas –
- The main navigation, which runs horizontally across the page and contains the mega dropdowns
- The secondary navigation below the news and events section
- The top right navigation, what we refer to as the Tools section, includes a new Logins feature, which will have dropdown links to popular services such as Email, OAK, YES, C2HR and more – making the most used and most searched for services available right on the homepage.
Why mega dropdowns
A primary focus of the new Vanderbilt homepage is improved navigation, primarily in the form of “mega” drop-down menus. Mega dropdowns eliminate page scrolling and reduce the number of clicks audiences take to reach their destination points, allowing for more direct links in a smaller amount of space. The content of these mega dropdowns was determined using page analytics as well as looking at what users were searching for most often.
Mega dropdowns can also be structured with layout, typography and images. For example, when you rollover About, you’ll get the top links related to that category, text describing Vanderbilt, and an image – in this case, the weather icon.
These dropdowns also test well in usability testing, and are Jakob Neilson-approved.
The terminology of the navigation has been tweaked a bit. For example, Prospective Students is now Admissions. Colleges and Schools is now Academics. Jobs is now Work at VU. (The first two are simply to be more direct and to keep our terminology in line with what prospective students and faculty are familiar at other universities. The third, changing Jobs to Work at VU, is just a nice shift from a very utilitarian word. Working at Vanderbilt is more than “just a job” for many of us!)
Content
The ever-popular large homepage photo will remain, but with improvements. Thumbnails of the rotating photos will appear to the right of the photo, allowing users to scroll through them and click the photos (in addition to the photos scrolling through automatically). The captions will appear to the left of the photo.
The section next to the Events is a spotlight area, where we will focus on major events, news and features for longer periods of time, such as Commencement, Haiti relief efforts, a major research news, technology announcements, Expanded Aid information, etc. Look for these to have a longer shelf life than the News box, which is updated daily.
The Events and News boxes will be updated frequently with the latest news and happenings around campus, with the News box now featuring thumbnail photos.
VUCast showcases the latest videos from around campus, such as the weekly VUCast newscast, lectures, concerts from Blair, Emmy-winning videos, etc. Use the right and left pointing arrows to scroll through the videos.
Finally, the footer features all the ways people can follow us via social networking, and our contact information.
Second levels
The second levels have a dramatic new look that mirrors the homepage, creating consistency and a “family” look to the site. Each page will have photos and captions specific to that category in the slider, as well as news in the right column that is specific to that page – making these second levels more like homepages for each category. We are striving to make the second level pages as content-rich, unique and interesting as the homepage, instead of just pages of massive lists of links.
The links to the right of the photo are the links from that category’s mega dropdown. (The mega dropdowns will also appear on each second level page). The other links on the page are grouped in a more attractive way than the current long list of links on the second levels. Each second level will also include photos from our Vanderbilt flickr site that relate to the page topic – classroom shots for Academics, campus shots for About VU, research photos for Research, etc.
Technical Specs
Validation
The pages are built around the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) HyperText Markup Language XHTML 1.0 Transitional and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS3) using the methods/best practices of the Web Standards Project.
These pages are designed to be viewed by all modern standards-compliant web browsers, accessible by those with disabilities, and minimally readable by all web-reading software. 1024 x 768 pixels is the minimum recommended viewing size (according to our analytics, less than 1% of our visitors have a screen resolution smaller than this). Recommended browsers (free download): Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 7+, and Opera.
- XHTML 1.0 Transitional — pages pass validation with no errors
Validation Links: Homepage and Second Level - CSS Level 3 — Validation is successful with the exception of approximately 16 errors (all related to browser-specific css rules for rounded corners and opacity).
Validation Links: Homepage and Second Level
Our goal is well-written, flexible and lean code that adheres to web standards. These newer browser features (rounded corners and opacity) are implemented using -moz and -webkit prefixes, as per the spec, so that they are silently discarded by older browsers without causing harm while simultaneously allowing modern browsers to enjoy the features.
Internet Explorer
In modern Web design, a well balanced combination of progressive enhancement and graceful degradation can work wonders.
Our overall strategy for developing is one of progressive enhancement. Progressive enhancement is a strategy in Web development and design that uses Web technologies in a layered fashion, therefore allowing everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a Web page (that’s you IE6), using any browser or Internet connection (that’s you dialup), while also providing those with better bandwidth or more advanced browser software an enhanced version of the page (that’s you Firefox, Safari, Opera and IE7+).
Our support of Internet Explorer is one of striving for graceful degradation. The site will function the same for all users, but those using more modern browsers will get more visual “treats” (rounded corners, opacity, smooth transitions, etc). While we could put extra code and hacks in place to have some of these features available in IE6, we have chosen to keep the code clean given the waning use and support of IE6. Conditional IE stylesheets are in place to ensure functionality and layout.
Page Size
The document size has been dramatically reduced – on average 50 percent smaller than the current pages.
We’ve also used css sprites for many of our UI (User Interface) elements, thus reducing the number of http requests. This has a fairly large impact on reducing response time and is an easy way to improve performance.
Combined, the reduced page size and http requests will be great for our bandwidth.
A look at our process: From wire frames to comps to code
Take a look at how we got to where we are with the design.
Credits
The design and coding is by the Office of University Web Communications.
March 16th, 2010
It would be difficult for students and faculty to find the “Libraries” homepage in order to access databases and do their research. (Last time the redesign omitted libraries from the top of the front page and it elicited a lot of protests and it was restored.) If it is not to be prominent as with the current homepage it should at least be readily visible under Research and Students and Academics. Given the number of hits and wide usage by students and faculty, in my opinion, it should remain as prominent as it now is. (Unfortunately, I think the current homepage links on left and design is easier to read and navigate than this redesign.)
March 16th, 2010
Thanks Paula … the content of the mega dropdowns is not finalized yet. I can certainly see libraries being under all three of those areas — thanks for the suggestion!
March 30th, 2010
I do like the proposed redesign and I understand nothing is finalized quite yet. With that said, I agree with Paula’s comment on Mar. 16. I feel the library should be more prominent but maybe not adding it to every drop-down. Here is an example of a library link location from Emory plus a hover drop-down menu. I also like the “schools” link location and drop-down.
http://www.emory.edu/home/index.html
Thanks.
March 31st, 2010
@Ronee Thanks for sending. We’re going to start playing around with having libraries in the tools nav in the upper right – with a dropdown including discovery library, finding books, articles/databases, etc. Stay tuned!
March 16th, 2010
Great work to the web redesign team! I love the new look. Obviously it will take a little getting used to finding the new locations for hot buttons like libraries and email logins. I know you’ll get lots of good feedback from folks. Good luck and thanks!! -C.
March 16th, 2010
This design feels generic and like a media site or blog, not sophisticated enough for a University- to me. The graphic elements are HUGE and there is SO much information competing for attention. I feel the site needs to be more subtle with less movement to be effective.
Here is a magazine site that looks good and has nice navigation:
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/
or NPR’s blog site:
http://www.npr.org/
March 30th, 2010
blech! Those sites are BORING! As a current Vanderbilt student, I don’t actually use the Vanderbilt homepage that much. I know the links to the main things I use. On the other hand, BEFORE I came to Vanderbilt, I was using the site all the time to find information, and sometimes that could be difficult. I love the new layout, and I think it’s time for a change!
March 16th, 2010
Wow! I love it — especially the mega-drop downs. They give the home page breathing room, which is so hard to achieve on an extremely complex site. And it’s so clean and current feeling.
March 16th, 2010
This is a fantastic start – it looks very polished already – good work you guys!!!
I love the mega dropdowns. As a user that style of navigation is really easy to use. Nice treatment on the gold too, I know it’s always challenging to make our colors seem new and fresh with each website redesign.
March 16th, 2010
This site feels very welcoming, which is important for a University homepage. I think the information density is good, and the “mega dropdowns” are definitely a plus. I’m glad you held onto the large photograph area :-)
One little thing — I noticed that the search button looks a little bit like it’s disabled (and you can’t actually click through to it on Firefox for Mac) :-) A trifling thing…
March 16th, 2010
Search button … good point, Ryan! This is updated!
March 16th, 2010
This site is very fast and efficient. It’s definitely an improvement over the previous version.
March 16th, 2010
I love the mega picture block at the top with the captions. Any thought on labeling the VUCast section VUCast Video? It might help people to understand the brand… especially since there’s a separate News section. Also, any thought on making the words Events, VUCast and News direct hyperlinks to those pages? Lastly, you have a gold bar and a faint block around events and news, but not VUCast. It seems like that VUCast section is kind of floating down there. All in all, you’ve all done a fantastic job!
March 16th, 2010
Events, VUCast and News … those should be links, indeed!
March 16th, 2010
I LOVE the drop downs. I’m in and out of the various schools all the time and this will save lots of time.
March 17th, 2010
This was definitely one of the areas that will most benefit from the mega dropdowns. The second level colleges page was almost entirely used by people wanting to go directly to a school site. This way … they can accomplish that from the homepage!
March 17th, 2010
Looks great. set-up, like the text color change with rollovers- could not find how to reach ALUMNI, currently it is listed on homepage – which makes giving possibilities invisible as well –
really like housing ALL links related to “faculty-staff” in the faculty staff tab
March 17th, 2010
Alumni, Giving, Libraries, Parents, Arts, etc … are all in the secondary nav. Analytics (and search term analysis) have shown that most visitors to those sites aren’t getting there from the homepage… (most of their traffic is DIRECT traffic – from emails, mail, etc – they’ve really well branded their URL that users go directly to their sites!) That said, those links are still very important and need to have a presence there, thus they have a place in the secondary nav on the lower part of the page. We’ll definitely look over this in usability testing in the coming weeks!
March 22nd, 2010
The dropdowns are a great improvement, but it looks too much like a generic social-media-esque site…some attention should be paid to keeping Vanderbilt’s image academic, sophisticated, etc. — not just tech-savvy. Maybe a mixture of serif/sans serif fonts, as well as making the tabs more attractive?
More specifically — maybe remove the shading/gradation of the horizontal bars? Changing the tabs from the large mixed-case font to a smaller, perhaps small-caps style would be more understated and appealing.
And what about keeping black or gold as a background color? The white looks unfinished (maybe it is…)
I really like the arrangement of the different elements — I think the graphical layout is excellent.
March 23rd, 2010
I’m with Madeline…I think the font and colors could use some work. The white leaves a lot of, well, white space which makes it feel kind of empty although it definitely is not.
The top bar has a larger-than-needed font that is a little outdated. I really like the current fonts on the homepage right now much more than the proposed page.
Overall, it looks good, although possibly a little too busy. I have always thought our website was better than other schools (the Emory University page has a lot going on, the Yale page is very plain, Columbia U has a good balance, but I think Harvard really is the best with visual appeal and navigation).
Good work though!
March 30th, 2010
@Lauren
While the Harvard site is pretty, it is also useless in that it essentially has no meaningful, consolidated navbar. Also, it suffers from our current site’s problem of unending lists of links on the second level pages.
However, I agree about the font, the problem is, that with websites there are only a few fonts that are safe to use. It appears they have used: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif (you can see the options here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web). I’m partial to Trebuchet and Veranda myself. Arial is only outdated because the brainwashing team at Microsoft decided it was, and gave us new fonts back in Office 2007, so I just prefer to call it abused.
March 30th, 2010
@Lauren, @Eric and @Madeleine … we’re playing around with using some serif fonts for section headers and some page titles. Stay tuned :)
March 30th, 2010
I noticed something else…
There is no prominent vertical element on the homepage (the second level pages have the sidebar) so there is nothing to draw the eye down the page. On the current site the left menu, the color variation and the boxed nature of the page accomplish this.
March 30th, 2010
First, I like the general direction this site is taking. I like the fresh colors and the continued revolving images. I also like the footer with the links to the social media sites and I love the header and the mega menus. The “news” and “events” are much easier to read now.
But the site does look like a blog, and the two navigation bars seem a tad too “tall.” The picture on the second levels is rather large and the size font for the caption seems out of place. I remember a time when Vanderbilt tried to separate the two navigation levels and it just didn’t work: the bottom bar always got lost or forgotten. Hopefully that won’t be the case, or maybe something to draw attention down the page will help (referencing Eric’ post on 03/30).
March 31st, 2010
I think the instant dropdown of the MegaMenus from the top row of tabs takes away from the other content on the website. A user will enter in the web address at the top of the browser, and then after the page loads they will bring their mouse down across the screen. The clicker has to pass over that top row of tabs, and a dropdown menu instantly opens up, blocking the user from seeing the majority of the website. I think that these drop down menus should have a short delay, even half a second, so that if someone is moving their mouse across the row of tabs to content lower on the webpage, their experience will not be interrupted by a large ‘megamenu’. However, if someone does know that they want content from one of the drop down menus, the must only hold their mouse there for a fraction of a second and then the menu will appear.
Otherwise looks great!
March 31st, 2010
We’ll try this and see how it goes in usability testing! Thanks for the suggestion :)
March 31st, 2010
I think the mega dropdowns will be very user friendly.
The photo captions on the homepage (vertical, on the left) are easier to read and less obscuring of the photos than the ones on the second level page (horizontal, almost at the bottom of the photo). Is there any way to have the captions pop up rather than slide in? The sliding captions, especially on the second-level page, seem a little busy.
The design is very clean, if perhaps a little generic. More black and gold, especially as vertical visual elements on the left and right of the page, would punch up the VU identity and the visual impact and would guide the visitor’s eye downward to the bottom navigation bar, which seems marooned at the bottom of the page.
Some of the black looks more like charcoal gray — that gives the page a softer “feel.” On the other hand, more contrast between (darker) type and (brighter) page background would make the text easier to read.
You’ve managed to cram a huge amount of information onto the page without making it look crowded. Neat trick!
March 31st, 2010
Hello,
I think this design is a good improvement in usability. Congratulations on the navigation elements.
It may be the lack of variety in font and color which is causing the comment that it looks like a blog. The color palette is probably too limited to keep one’s interest through the second level–it can be useful to have a secondary palette to differentiate content areas. Here you’re using a shade/screen effect to try to create that interest in the content boxes. Gray is gray is gray no matter what shade.
Likewise, the font is all arial-like and all of it is on the large size. a secondary font type with some smaller headlines would help. I like the direction we’re moving in. I suggest looking for refinement in color and font styles/sizes along with avoiding rounded corners on text boxes (another blog feature).
March 31st, 2010
We’re playing around with using serif fonts for section and page titles, while keeping the more screen friendly sans-serif fonts for larger blocks of text. Color is something we’re also working on bumping up on the second levels specifically.
March 31st, 2010
On the secondary page, Administration listing….where is Health Affairs and DAR? I think all of the Vice Chancellor areas should be listed and consistently formatted, either “Division of ____ ” or “Vice-Chancellor of ____” as titles. You list General Counsel for David Williams, but University Affairs is omitted, so that’s incomplete information.
I’d prefer the bars that run left to right were alphabetized by category name, making searching for the item you want easier. At first glance, I thought you had left off Medical Center and DAR totally.
March 31st, 2010
Content on the 2nd level is filler at this point, and will be gone over with a fine-tooth comb for accuracy and style before the launch. For the record, Health Affairs and University Affairs don’t have websites that we’re aware of, so we can’t link to them.
March 31st, 2010
I like the new look! I don’t have time right now to look more closely, but I like to request that under the Students tab across the top of the homepage, please change “Registrar” to “University Registrar”.
Thank you.
March 31st, 2010
In general, I think the new design is an improvement though there’s a need for content editing. There are several mismatched photos & text; I’m assuming that’s just because this is a beta and any convenient photo was used. The dropdown menus are missing some things that I think are really important, for example “Coeus” under “Research”, “YES” or “Faculty Senate” under “Faculty & Staff”
BTW, the campus map page often has problems (won’t display images). I am using IE 8. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/map/
March 31st, 2010
Thanks. All content is filler at this point, including photo captions and the content of the drop downs.
March 31st, 2010
P.S. I could really do without prime web page real estate being given to iPhone apps.
March 31st, 2010
The section featuring the iphone apps next to the Events is a spotlight area, where we will focus on major events, news and features for longer periods of time, such as Commencement, Haiti relief efforts, a major research news, technology announcements, Expanded Aid information, etc. It will be changed out regularly.
March 31st, 2010
this may be asking too much, but harvard.edu is sleek, minimalistic, yet academic and elite. Speaking as a current undergraduate student, I echo the comments made by others — current site looks like a generic social media template mixed with Vanderbilt colors. I think its screaming too much at me at once and needs to be toned down a bit. This is definitely an update from the current site….
March 31st, 2010
I find Mega Dropdowns overwhelming. It’s not much different than seeing a big list of links. A more effective way to reduce the number of clicks and keystrokes users have to take is through a live search box – similar to OS X’s spotlight or the one built into the top right of http://apple.com
On the homepage, the menu bar should put below the large images to give them more prominence and reduce initial clutter. See http://wired.com for an example on how they give more importance to the top articles, then show the general navigation below it.
The bottom row of menu buttons seems excessive, as there is already a button for more news, already links for libraries via the “students” dropdown, and “work at VU” via the about dropdown. I’d say get rid of it & fold the remaining links in elsewhere.
I also don’t think many visitors are going to use Vandy’s homepage to find out about events. They’ll either know about them from email or subscribe to them in a different manner. You could use that space for some kind of rotating “Did you know?” kind of fact to keep the homepage always fresh similar to Wikipedia’s daily “did you know?”. Or the space could be removed entirely and give more prominence to news.
The VUCast section is great with the added graphics, but doesn’t fit in well. I’d fold those items into a more general news list The news stream could contain a variety of data types: events, news articles, links, and videos. That would make it more engaging and diverse, simplifying the site a lot.
The social media buttons at the bottom look great! Definitely keep those.
Overall, a huge leap forward from the current site, but I think it can still be drastically simplified and cleaned up. Keep up the good work!
-Riley
March 31st, 2010
Greetings from China!
As a big fan of the acorn “V” logo, is it possible for the header logo to be changed to one of the following:
a) a free-standing V instead of a boxed V?
b) the logo with the acorn V in the middle (Vanderbilt “V” University)?
c) a larger, more artistic use of the acorn V like on the Vanderbilt Law School webpage (in the middle of the photo, not the top)?
With all of the available versions of the Vanderbilt logo, the boxed-in-V design is, in my opinion, the least modern-looking and copies the current .edu logo. In honor of modernity and creativity, your consideration is appreciated!
April 1st, 2010
Overall, it’ll be a nice improvement. However, there are quite a few issues with the design.
IMHO, there is a critical one. I have a 1920×1200 resolution display. Even if I make the window full size, the current page does not fit the screen without a vertical scrollbar ( I tried IE8 and Chrome). I understand that everybody should be able to read the content, but some of the elements are simply huge. Most modern websites find the right balance between a nice compact representation and readability.
The top navigation area (email…etc and Search below it) seems a bit awkward. It takes up a lot of space and does not align with anything. I would change the layout there.
The area near the bottom right corner with the small pictures and blurbs (under VUCAST) and the two columns above it do not align well. They almost have the same width, but not quite. It might be better if they aligned.
The MegaMenus are good, but again they are huge. The same info could fit in a smaller space and then it would not cover up half the page.
I encourage you to test with Chrome too. While overall it has a small market share, in university circles it is very popular.
April 2nd, 2010
@Akos Thanks for your feedback! We have reduced the size of most of the text (which also ends up reducing the size of the mega dropdowns) and as you’ll see from the update on 04-01-2010, we’ve combined several sections, and realigned a few of the elements. Rest assured, we will be testing in ALL browsers – including Chrome :) Thanks again for taking the time to comment.
April 1st, 2010
What’s so bad about the old homepage? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
April 1st, 2010
Way too much white space, which is not pleasing to look at! The eye wanders too much when there is no closure on the sides. Add a light background color to help contain the info, or add some kind of bounding box around the main page’s info. There are too many moving items on the page which is distracting. Also there are too many small sectioned items going on with the page. It is difficult to find one thing to focus on. The reader will click and go to the info they are looking for. It doesn’t all need to be splatter all over the front, each item competing with the other. Less is more. I’m a graphic designer – I’d suggest you have a few graphic designers work with you on this, not just web programmers that may not be trained in design and layout.
April 1st, 2010
Yay! I like the concept–it feels more open and brighter with the white background. I also like the gray fade.
For purposes of the input, it would have helped if I could toggle back and forth between this comment field and the beta pages! I opened the VU site separately to get around that, however.
On the first page, the captions are positioned so as to not cover up photos. I suggest changing the second page to the same format.
Menu Bars:
What if the gold menu bar at the foot of the page was moved up to right below the top one with a black line between? Both could be made narrower to keep much of the other content still in view. The links bar at the very bottom needs to be a lighter gray–or gold–to be readable. If not, the typeface needs to be larger and heavier without being bolded. The Search field has the same problem, as does the sidebar on the second page. I recognize that gray is a version of the black of Vanderbilt’s colors, but readability is important. (grin) I like the charcoal gray touches; as someone else mentioned, they’re softer than the black.
In the little gold squares, the print is hard to read (e.g., the months in the Events section). Are they in boldface? The white arrows need to have a heavier weight in both the gold and the gray circles.
Finally, as regards the Medical Center button’s options, there truly needs to be only one click to “find a clinical provider” (not just doctors…) for ease of navigation. I’ve found that feature to be particularly helpful at other medical centers’ sites.
Best wishes!
April 1st, 2010
@Susan Just updated the links to open in a new window :) And love the “find a clinical provider” for the MC dropdown. Thanks!
April 1st, 2010
Overall, I think this is great. I think the main box with the photos should be larger. The photos are often so good, they should be emphasized. They could take up at least another inch. Also, I’d reconsider the white background. The gold you currently use with the Vanderbilt logo watermark effect might look great. There are also 3 places to click news. Could be confusing/overkill.
The boxes on the bottom right with VU cast and Mobile web seem to be floating in nowhere. I also think “Vanderbilt University” should be more prominent. The drop downs could be reduced in size and “Vanderbilt University” could stretch across the screen.
But seriously, this is great!
April 1st, 2010
@Mike VUCast is indeed floating – and that’s something we’re working on as well as possibly combining the news and events sections. Thanks for your feedback!
April 1st, 2010
[…] continue to share your thoughts in the Comments section – we’ll be taking input through April […]
April 1st, 2010
Lots of information, organized well, very accessible.
Do readers expect to find a second navigation bar at the bottom of the page? May be frustrating for visitors in those categories — parents, givers — looking for an immediate way in.
The main navigation bar fades away because the gray background continues below the picture on the rest of the visible page. I do like that serif type is making a comeback. Too much sans serif = not contemporary, really boring.
I think “Prospective Students” may be more immediately accessible, but if others are going with “Admissions”…. Could you put “Parents” and “Counselors” on the dropdown to make it less frustrating for these important constitutents?
As a shoutout to the great writers over there at the Medical Center, when you click “News and Publications” under that button you get the VU News Network and the med center pubs are nowhere to be seen. Just temporary, maybe?
I like the right-side menu on the second-level page, and giving the viewer visuals of the rotating pictures is a plus. It somehow adds an element of viewer control, and we all like a little of that when we’re perusing web sites.
April 1st, 2010
the links in the nav bars are not correctly linked at this point; however – I believe the VUMC News and Publications would actually link to: http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/news/
April 1st, 2010
Hey! I’m so glad you’re working on a new site. It looks great! I have a couple suggestions, though. I’m a student, but I’ve been doing web design and graphic art for a long time. (http://www.gotow.net/creative/) A lot of this is just style stuff, but it might be worth trying!
– I’d add a subtle drop shadow to the gray bar at the top of the page. I think it’d be helpful to delineate it from the main content block. I’d also make the gray bar a bit shorter – 60px is quite a bit. I feel like a thinner bar with slightly smaller text would give it a more professional feel.
– I feel like some of the links at the bottom of the page need to be incorporated into the top menu. The link for “Parents,” for example, should really be in with the rest of the Admissions links. I think it’s alright to make libraries, giving, etc… second class citizens on the page, but some of them should be tied in.
– Stanford’s website (http://www.stanford.edu/) has an image slider on the front page too, but they provide an option to pop it out and view a long (60+ photos) slideshow. I think it’s a cool feature that you might be able to incorporate into this!
The Wired.com look would be an interesting choice – I actually built InsideVandy.com, the student newspaper’s website, and created a template with a dynamic grid for news content: http://www.insidevandy.com/. The WIRED grid is definitely one of my favorite designs.
Anyway – great work on the redesign! I’m excited.
– Ben
April 2nd, 2010
@Ben We love the power of the grid :) We’ve based our grid loosely on blueprint’s 24-column grid. We’re also trying out a new treatment of the top nav bar (viewable in the screenshot in the update post from 04-01-2010) that incorporates a bit more shading to give it some delineation. Thanks for your comments and great job on InsideVandy!!
April 2nd, 2010
I think it looks beautiful. I would love it if there were a way to stop the pictures from changing. The constant changing is something that I find really distracting about the current website (to the degree that I won’t leave the VU homepage up at all unless I’m actually using it).
April 5th, 2010
Thanks Laurie. The photos on the current homepage do have a pause button. :)
April 6th, 2010
Wow, how have I not seen that for all these years? Thank you!
April 2nd, 2010
An outsider looking for the Vanderbilt Medical Center might be truly lost by the process of choosing Academics, then School of Medicine, then Vanderbilt Medical Center. Perhaps the Medical Center Main Page could be a link in the ‘About’ section on the main page.
April 2nd, 2010
Hmmm … the Medical Center is a main link on the navigation? Far right?
April 5th, 2010
My suggestion would be to have four diffierent types of areas affiliated with Vanderbilt. Perhaps a four corner view with the VU logo in the center of the home page. Maybe something Sports related, research related, and/or picture of the medical center. I think the four corner view would really be different and eye catching. Thanks for allowing me to comment and offer a suggestion.
April 6th, 2010
Great: The new website seems to be fairly user friendly. I love the drop down boxes and options for connecting to VU through different media like fb, twitter, etc.
Could be even better: Although the new website is more streamlined than the current one, the overall feeling is less impressive. A darker color scheme and fewer options on our homepage would leave visitors with a stronger impression of our school. Too much is happening right now in too large of a font…it feels cluttered. The bottom menu bar is easy to overlook.
April 8th, 2010
I think the 1st proposed homepage is best. I think the feel to it and find it flows well. The Faculty & Staff dropdown is great and Go for the Gold stands out more!
April 25th, 2010
The font is just too big! Everything is too big!
That’s all I’ve got
August 30th, 2010
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