Re: Thoughts on web site design

[bickiia@earlham.edu]

Robert Hopcroft <hopcroft@uswest.net> wrote:
>I thought I would lay out my thoughts on a design for the seul-edu web

>site and see if there are any comments. On the SEUL home page have a
>schoolhouse for the seul-edu icon. Clicking it would set one in a
>classroom where a blackboard would have written on it our news items.
>Next there would be the teacher's desk and on the desk there would be a

>stack of books with titles such as HOW-TOs, Clickable Cell Biology
>Course, etc. Most of what is on the seul-edu web pages is text which
can
>be thought of as pages in a book. Thus clicking on a book on the desk
>brings up that material. When we get too many books for the table, we
>can go to the library and continue on. 

I'm not sure how this could be done without lots of quite large
graphics.  There's definately an emphasis in this group on low-powered
computing.  (and Macs, popular with many schools, render pages
particularly slowly in my experience)  I think the page should be quite
accessible to people on any sort of computer.

I don't see a need for anything too fancy.  More important is useful,
actively updated information.  Everything else only needs to show that
SEUL is serious enough to make a professional-looking page -- what form
of professionalism (school motif, computer, commercial, etc.) is almost
incidental.

A simple school motif might simply be extensive use of primary colors
against a white background.  

Another possibility is to look at textbook design and mimic that.  I
kind of like sidebars, at least in narrative text, and that's very
popular with textbooks.  We could even put excercises at the end of
pages, though that would almost seem satiral.  The notion amuses me at
the moment, though... 

Anyway, like a textbook you could have references for more information
at the end, a fair amount of color, something like chapter headings
(except more navigational), maybe some of the icons (like ! on warnings,
magnifying glasses on in-depth items, etc)...

That's my thought, though the basis for the design might end up being
lost on most people.

Whatever it is, I think simplicity almost always looks better in design.


  -- Ian