The content of the portal is so extensive to the point where the aesthetics and design of the portal are reduced to compartmentalized information where long lists of blue links wait to be clicked; and if you are lucky, you may hit one that takes you to a more aesthetically pleasing place where color and images become part of the design. For instance, clicking on faculty bios or exchange and mobility programs takes you to a place where information is organized within a drop down list that creatively incorporates pictures from school functions, student or faculty artworks. Here, the sidebar has general categories that bring ease to your search for information. Besides this, the portal can still be overwhelming, is not very intuitive, and is a site that demands a lot of time to learn how to navigate through.
On the positive side, I appreciate the fact that the portal does not have a lot of fancy, overbearing features. I enjoy the one flash slideshow on the portal home page exhibiting student work even though it does not change over much. I also appreciate the portal customization feature even though I am to scared to use it, and I enjoy looking at the career launch link where you can have access to jobs, internships and store resumes and cover letters. The only suggestions I have for the portal are to improve their people soft feature because it is not user friendly and can only be accessed through Firefox servers. Also, I dislike how the backward tab sometimes locks you out of your account. Overall, I do not have any amazing suggestions since I understand that this portal is a home for enormous amount of information, resulting in a lot of text and boring design. B-.
perhaps what you've hit on is the reason the portal is in it's current state. maybe there isn't any groundbreaking way to improve the saic portal, at least not within reasonable financial and time restraints, and so we're left with a functioning and effective, if not particularly attractive, user-interface to the school. that being said, what would your ideal link be, meaghan? if you could design it from scratch, what would you do?
ReplyDeletewell, that is a good question and I don't know if I have an answer. I have never dabbled in web development, so I really have no idea what it takes to create a website. What I would like are some soft colors in place of the white space, which could breath some life into the portal. Another idea would be to take the design of SAIC's main website and incorporate the top-down design with images of artwork into the portal instead of the using compartments for each category. How about this...what if each category was an icon that linked you to a page that had the list of links. This way the main page would not be so overwhelming with text. Then there would be more room for the slideshow, weather, groups, email, courses. I guess it is time to play around with customizing my portal.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even comment on the aesthetics in Artbot's blog. Thinking of the SAIC portal in the framework of the fact that this is an art school... This is a site designed for the exclusive use of art students and faculty. Does the design aesthetic visually reflect our creative community?
ReplyDeleteArtbot also likes the flash slideshow of student work. That is one of the better aspects of the site.
i like the suggestions of icons to take you to sections/categories. It reduces text, and adds something more exploratory, interesting to the page. good luck with your portal customization!
ReplyDelete