Lafayette College has just launched a redesigned web site. From a technical perspective you technically-minded folks will find it interesting that it is built on WordPress. But the careful process that they followed to arrive at the design is what really counts, and shows in the quality of the finished project. It takes a lot of work to bring about a site redesign – good to see it all come together so nicely.
Planning for a web site redesign involves a lot of components – and the real job is only just beginning when the design itself is done. From Adaptive path comes this diagram of a typical site redesign process. Take-aways: Strategy & Design is approximately 1/6th of the total job – technology considerations don’t really enter until after strategy & design are done (it IS really all about the content and communication, isn’t it?) And the content owner (also known as the client) has the lion’s share of the work. No surprises here for those of us who’ve been through this a couple of times, but nice to see it all so well illustrated. Bring this to your next site-design kick-off meeting!
Here is a new approach for all business/academic presentations – 20 slides, 20 seconds each that auto-advance. You have 6 minutes and 40 seconds – go! I wonder if this would accomplish the intention of getting people to focus on sending a clear message with no filler/no distractions. Or would it just dumb-down further the already dumbed-down, low information quality of most Powerpoint-driven presentations. I gotta find some place to try this out soon…
In Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work Matthew Crawford explores ideas around work in today’s society and the nature of the modern office workplace. His ideas are presented in a clear, well argued and well substantiated manner. The book is well worth reading.
No matter how committed to not being evil they are, social media companies will end up with privacy policies that don’t serve all users well. Part of the problem is the companies’ primary goals – make money – differs from our needs — share stuff with groups of friends, work colleagues and family. Another issue is we all have our own individual privacy concerns. So why put all our eggs into one social media basket? A group of students from NYU suggests that their personal web server project could be the answer. It is a brilliant concept – a very personal social media service, decentralized but still a network.
Mouseflow.com is a new service that offers an in-depth view into user behavior on a website. It is run through a simple piece of javascript code put on each page. And the resulting analysis is very interesting. In addition to the standard number of visitors, average time on page, etc, you also get to view recordings of the mouse activity (and supposedly attention behavior) of individual users. And these recordings get rolled up into head maps (example below). The free version will record up to 100 visits per month for a site. It is worth a look.
Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
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