University Website
by Berg
Image Text: People go to the website because they can't wait for the next alumni magazine, right? What do you mean, you want a campus map? One of our students made one as a CS class project back in '01! You can click to zoom and everything!
First off, an apology- this post should have gone up 24 hours ago, but I've been distracted by a wedding. Some advice- if you ever get married, just get married. Don't ever have a wedding. From my experience, the actual ceremony is more trouble than it's worth. Or, stay single. That's even easier.
Secondly- yesterday's xkcd. Pretty easy one this time, so hopefully you haven't been going too crazy trying to figure it out. This comic is all about the vast gulf between what people who design university websites think is wonderful about their university, and what people who visit university websites think is relevant information. Naturally, this information is best presented in the form of a Venn diagram, so that we can see what (if any) is the overlap between these two groups.
In the case of university websites, it's simple- the full name of the university. Folks who design the website think it's a piece of information that is interesting, and it's also a piece of information that people who visit the website are interested in finding. Sadly for prospective college students and their parents, that's where the similarities end. I would go through and list the reasons why each item is useful or useless and the philosophies behind them, but as I said- weddings are more trouble than they're worth, and I've got some trouble to attend to.
Ah- the image text, and then trouble. It's clearly written from the point of view of one of the folks who design the website, singing the praises of their well-laid out and helpful site. Clearly, they are wrong, and the folks who design the website are just drooling morons who, apparently, have never tried to use a website to find anything.
One last thing- I'm aware that the folks who design the website are often not the same as the folks who decide what information goes on the website, and that many a web designer has made an awful web page because they've been instructed to do that and nothing else. However, for ease of reference, I made the two one up above. Web designers, please accept my apology.
And now, off to help a distressed sibling/bride find a missing piece of her wedding dress. Cross your fingers for me.
July 31st, 2010
This should be filed under ‘Venn Diagrams’, not ‘Uncategorized’.
August 1st, 2010
I find weddings amusing. Though I think it is easier to enjoy if you are not or are not closely related the wedding couple. Certainly like it from the crazy friend point of view, the one that makes dry sarcastic remarks to the groom all night, and ends up predicting every mistake and “accident” that happens that night and the following few days.
August 1st, 2010
The point of this comic is too true to be funny. My son is about to start college, and over the past year or so, we have struggled to get meaningful data from college websites. I finally just started calling by phone.
August 2nd, 2010
This comic made me laugh a second time, when I realized that the number of bookmarks in my browser, which lead to some subpage of my universitys homepage, is exactly the same as the number of interesting points not to be found on the starting page in this comic: 8. <3