ok so it's the easter break. Wahey! and for some reason the uni website had annoyed me for the final time. it has driven me to dispair for many years and finally decided to tell someone. and this is the result of my rant.
For those who share my pain and hatred for the uni web site, i shall update this entry with any response i get, which hopefully will be valid answers to my valid comments, even if they were written with a hint of sarcasm and humour.
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To whom it may concern,
My name is Phil Flynn, I'm a finalist on the computer science degree
scheme. It has been an issue of mine since joining the university that the
reading website is practically unusable for anyone other than prospective
students. I assumed it was just me, however after the last student-staff
liaison meeting, I discovered that it was also a hate of both staff and
students in all other years. Please take the following comments with an air
of humour however please see the frustration from our side.
The problem seems to be that during the website design, there either wasn't
any or if there was any user acceptance and usability testing it was of the
wrong nature. The site seems to be tailored to drawing in students however
for those who are here and require any kind of university related
information, the site provides obscurity to the point at which Google is
your only chance, which it shouldn't be.
For example, timetabling, term start and end dates and other information
such as the medical practise is practically impossible to locate unless a
search is made from Google, that is of course unless the user really likes
digging through pages. There are no functional links (or if there are, no
one has ever found them) to provide this information. It is easier, faster
and more reliable to simply search for it than navigate the uni website. If
this was the intention during development it is an extremely poor method of
design. If there is a reason for this obscurity, I can't think of one but
still, then providing the information and simply not linking to it is a
truly appalling method of hiding information.
Starting at http://www.reading.ac.uk/ how many mouse clicks does it take to find
the term dates of an undergraduate studying computer science. Go on try it
now.
Take for example Sheffield universities website (http://www.shef.ac.uk/). It
is bright, uncluttered, updated daily and a pleasure to navigate and as a
real bonus the search function works reasonably well. The Reading website
is cluttered, unclear and unusable. It cannot be doing anything (positive)
for the image of the university. If the reason for the poor construction is
lack of funding, which I find hard to believe for such a critical public
facing form of media, why not provide it as a final year project or even as
coursework for the 2nd year GUI/HCI module which Prof. Rachel McCrindle
teaches. This module involves the creation a complete website that complies
to w3c standards and involves usability testing and consideration. The
results are surprising and at the very least would show other takes on the
presentation and format the site may take.
Looking at the previous versions of the reading website
(http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.reading.ac.uk) it seems that
between the years of 2001 and 2002, the website on first impressions
actually appears usable, or at least readable. Before 2001, its just plain
dated, and after which everything goes to pot. None more so than the
dramatic change in 2007 and afterwards.
Another VERY annoying aspect of the reading domain is the incorrect
forwarding of addresses without the "www.". In that there is none. Is there
a purpose for this other than to force people to use FQDN's? As a potential
student it doesn't look particularly good when every other institution can
manage it except us.
In conclusion, for the next website design please please PLEASE perform at
least SOME user testing; perhaps even using students... the actual users of
the system. Websites should be easy to read and use, especially when the
goal is to attract students who are going to pay £X thousand a year to
study and support the university.
As a side note, can the examinations office please release the exam results
in a productive manner? There are at least two correct methods to this
problem and one fundamentally flawed method. The method that is currently
being employed is delivery via risis. This approach should work except the
entire university is alerted to the fact that the results are up and there
is no surprise that the site falls over within 5 seconds (although it
probably provides a few giggles for those in support watching the traffic
graphs peak). What is wrong with either emailing the results to students,
or hiring some cloud computing for the day? Yes the latter involves
spending money, but seriously, is $50 REALLY going to sorely missed for a
few hours of usable service? (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/) Failing those two
options, restrict risis to bands of users, alphabetical or module groups or
whatever is best suited during results. Could risis be hosted on a better
server or traffic load balanced efficiently? It behaves like a Pentium 2,
when it decides to actually serve pages.
Finally, for sites that require certificates please consider either getting
certificates for the .rdg.ac.uk domain also or simply forward to
.reading.ac.uk. The short cut is incredibly handy but hampered severely by
poor maintenance and housekeeping.
I accept that a lot of the problems might be due to 'higher powers that
be', however if the site isn't usable what's the point in it being there. I
look forward to hearing your comments and views. Yours sincerely
Phil Flynn
Comments
Interesting. All I'm going to say is that I agree with pretty much all of what is said.
Richard Sherwood on Friday, 27 March 2009, 12:41 GMT # |
I think your e-mail just about says it all. I had never considered it before as being a problem in that some time ago I wanted to find some information, couldn't, so I Googled it; it's now something I've done out of habit ever since.
I think getting students involved is a bold move that could have massive benefits; particularly in testing, rather than development.
I would think that a Uni such as Reading, complete with a good IT-related reputation, would do everything possible to 'practise what it preaches'!
James Marshall on Saturday, 28 March 2009, 01:17 GMT # |
Phil on Saturday, 28 March 2009, 12:00 GMT # |
Hi Phil,
My name’s Richard Sandford and I work in Student Services; long-time lurker, first time poster!* I’m Student Communication and Web Support Officer in Student Services (and so I look after the Student pages), so thought it might be appropriate if I reply to your post (I also previously worked in the Digital Development Team migrating sites into the webCMS).
In some senses you’re right about the site being designed to draw in new students: you allude to the fact, in your posts, that web sites are a key marketing tool. However, this doesn’t mean that once you’re here the University suddenly decides to ignore your needs on this front. There are three main areas where we currently provide you with information online – the School/dept internal pages, the Student pages (including the RISIS portal) and the School portals in Blackboard.
I’m not sure that the site is as opaque as you claim. All of the information that you cite in your post is available in three clicks (and I hate typing that phrase):
Timetabling: UoR homepage > Students tab > Timetables and Room Booking (in Other links box)
Term dates: UoR homepage > Students tab > Academic Support > Term dates (under 'General' heading)
Medical practice: UoR homepage > Students tab > Student Advice > Medical Practice/Health Centre (under 'Advice and welfare heading')
You make reference to the Sheffield site, and whilst I agree that it’s an appealing design, it’s interesting to note that if you search for the same info you have the following results:
Timetabling: (not found without search
Term dates: 4 or 5 clicks - using an A-Z)
Medical practice: 4/5 clicks - using an A-Z)
Hopefully you’re aware of the existence of the Student pages – if not I guess I need to talk to some colleagues about making them more visible from the UoR homepage. I’m currently in the middle of a project to revamp the Student pages – I intend to get some feedback before launching the site and would be glad to have you come to one of our focus groups. The Student pages mirror the information given to students in the Student Diary. I recognise that some of the headings on the homepage of the Student pages are a bit ambiguous, and am hoping to rectify this by providing sample links and expanding the menu.
With regards to your other comments; I can’t claim to be an expert in the other areas you mention, but here’s my take on the issues you raise -
FQDN’s – seems Oxford and Cambridge can’t manage it either, so I feel we’re in good company! It’s being looked at internally by ITS and the policy may change in the future. To be honest I can’t give you a full answer as to why we don’t, but I understand that it’s a piece of historical policy. I’m not from a computing background (I’m a Humanities graduate) and must confess that this really isn’t an issue for me.
I’m sure that testing was carried out when the site was first launched. I’m sure that Kate will confirm this in her email to you.
The examinations office are aware of the problems with delivering information via RISIS. I believe that this year the notification emails will be staggered to avoid the problem of failing servers. Whilst your suggestion of hiring some cloud computing for the day is pragmatic there are Data Protection issues with regards to housing this kind of information on servers based outside the UK. The RISIS office (in conjunctin with the Examinations office) have taken the following steps to avoid this kind of problem recurring – 1. Results will be emailed to students and then released via a ‘results screen’ on the student portal. 2. Release of results will be staggered according faculty and when they’re released by the relevant exam board. 3. Other institutions have the same problem and we’re all working with the developers to find news ways to solve it. On a related note the exam timetables were released at the end of last term with very few problems – this bodes well for the release of the results!
.rdg. Yep – this bugs me too (logging in to Blackboard using .rdg produces an invalid security certificate). I’ll have a word with some people in IT to see about the redirect for those sites that require certificates – it seems like an eminently sensible solution!
I’m sure that Kate or one of her colleagues will reply to you soon, however if you’d like any further information then please do not hesitate in contacting me.
Cheers,
Richard
* That’s not to say that Big Brother’s been watching you – rather that I’ve been interested in the RedGloo site since Karsten and Pat made me aware of its existence!
Richard Sandford on Tuesday, 31 March 2009, 17:18 BST # |
Phil on Tuesday, 31 March 2009, 19:45 BST # |
Regarding sites such as redgloo, ssec and thisisme (ones which don't accecpt a www in front) - I think I have to 'claim' responsibility. A few years ago (hrm, OK, a decade ago!) I did a study for a multinational company into user preferences relating to URLs. The users I spoke to for this (a wide range, but broadly fairly competent users) said that they preferred addresses which had something meaningful at the beginning - they were easier to remember.
Now, www is (vaguely) meaningful, of course, but only as long as it isn't overused. The advice formulated at the time was to have a central web presence with www but for specific services or sites to have the name of that service as the subdomain. I cannot remember offhand whether I was involved with the RedGloo naming, but ssec.reading.ac.uk was mine (the ssec stands for school of systems engineering community, by the way, and the site was originally a Moodle instance, for those too young to remember it!).
The re-branding exercise has dictated that everything should really now be called things like
www.reading.ac.uk/thisisme - which I personally find somewhat tiresome, and I don't tend to remember it well. In theory we should set up a redirect from www.reading.ac.uk/redgloo to redgloo.sse.reading.ac.uk (actually, in theory I believe that should be the other way around, with redgloo.sse.reading.ac.uk redirecting to www.reading.ac.uk/redgloo)
Personally, I prefer to reduce the number of keystrokes. As a user, I also prefer to have sites named in ways that are simple to remember and consistent. The branding exercise told us that URLs should not have capital letters - so whilst I rather like www.reading.ac.uk/Medical_Practice it doesn't conform to 'the rules'. Fortunately, the web server isn't case sensitive so www.reading.ac.uk/medical_practice works. I would prefer camel case, but that is not within the branding rules either (so this site would have to become www.reading.ac.uk/redgloo).
Personally (again) I would prefer to see
medical_practice.reading.ac.uk (as a subdomain is not case sensitive, I would have to accept the _ )
disability_office.reading.ac.uk (instead of www.reading.ac.uk/disability - other resources have the office part in the address, why not this one?)
And I would really like to see a common format after that too - the 'about' pages should have the same name, not a directoy followed by a name which varies between sites (although I believe www.reading.ac.uk/<unit>/about redirects suitably, at least in general)
Even better, I would like to be able to use the URL in a more natural way - www.reading.ac.uk/contact/disability_office and www.reading.ac.uk/about/medical_practice for instance.
In all those cases I would also prefer to have rdg in place of reading - apart from anything else, reading has this awkward synonym (I've heard) which makes searches a bit of a pain.
P@ Parslow on Tuesday, 31 March 2009, 20:57 BST # |
Phil on Tuesday, 31 March 2009, 21:46 BST # |