always crashing in the same car: recurring misuses of higher-education web sites - introduction
Pick a higher education Web site. Any higher education Web site.
Likely what you’ve got is the agglomerated result of battling needs, wants, and not a little politics.
All levels of higher education Web sites have multiple and disparate audiences. They end to be designed by one or more committees, frequently comprised of individuals who substitute matters of taste and personal agendas for an understanding and appreciation of sound content, functionality, accessibility, and usability. They tend to fall prey to the Massive Upheaval style of site redesign (see The Case for Incremental Redesign, Parts I and II).
This series highlights many of the common and recurring misuses of higher education Web sites. Beginning with…