Richard Tammar asked for experiences. Since we have just finished the
redesign of our departmental web pages (in time for a QAA visit), here
are our experiences. At the end are my reflections on branding.
The site is http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/
The notes from the different stages of the design, development and
implementation process can be found at:
http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/web/
We used the branding elements from the QUB Communications Office.
In fact, as we can only get design done by one of three approved
design companies, they already knew the branding guidelines. But those
only provided the logo and way of displaying the university name on
our site. That was necessary, but not sufficient, for designing the look
and feel of our main pages.
The most important consideration was the reader experience in
navigating and reading our site. It is the student experience that
the teams of QAA teaching quality inspectors assess. We wanted to
make sure that there was a standard minimum amount of information
on each module on the site, so that students could pick out modules,
and a consistent navigation scheme that lets them find the modules,
common student information and staff.
We did an initial information design, then tendered for design
companies to extend this information design, embed it in a graphical
design, and produce design templates (some static, some dynamic).
The one company that actually understood our requirements
(not the BBC) then spent some time with our students looking at
web sites and possible designs, to get an idea of what images
would attract them to look at the site. Hence the 'big business'
feel for the graphics. They then modified them to put some
women in the images, not just men, as we refused to accept
the excuse that their standard image libraries only included men.
More than half the students on degrees in the School of
Management and Economics are female.
The final design (information, graphical and dynamic) owed a lot
more to the specific reader focussed development process than
the corporate branding. I don't know if the final result is good
enough to win prizes (like the Strangford Lough site,
http://www.strangfordlough.org/) but the students and the QAA
reviewers seem to like it. To achieve it took a lot of time and
effort (from December 2000 to October 2001, and onwards, as
a web site is never finished).
And this site is designed mainly for one type of reader: our current
full-time students. We would need to go through another full
design process for sites aimed at executive MBA students, the
non-English speaking parents who pay the fees for our overseas
students, and researchers in the EU seeking partners for Framework
projects. Some of those (but not many) might have to use
separate branding (e.g. a traditional crest is more impressive in
Asia than a modern logo).
Returning to the issues of corporate branding, there is a lot of debate
in marketing journals and elsewhere on how such concepts translate
into an on-line world where the reader has far more freedom of choice.
At a click of a mouse, a potential student or European research
partner has gone elsewhere - unlike the readers of paper brochures
and magazines. Relationship marketers argue that you need to
address the concerns of each individual reader, not the demographic
groups you would consider in branding. Branding specialists
respond with subtle variations of sub-branding. Hoffman and Novak
concentrate on the psychological state of the reader using a computer,
a 'flow state' more found in computer games than when reading a
newspaper. And researchers at St. Galen university have published
articles collecting together dozens of techniques for website evaluation,
from a range of perspectives: HCI to assessing business benefit.
All of this research is too recent to have been picked up by
consultancies like Price Waterhouse Coopers, or graphic designers,
and then sold back to university administrators (in the normal way
they learn about the research of their academics and achievements
of their technicians).
The problem in practice is that many of the obvious analogies are
partly or wholly false. Is a collection of web pages a brochure,
a magazine, a virtual campus through which visitors walk, or
a computer game? What is the relevant design profession?
Copy writing? Poster art? Architecture? Sign writing? Information
Systems? Can we take the rules that apply in any one of these
areas and apply them to communication in electronic communities?
Stafford Beer developed the cybernetic idea of the appropriate
degree of variety in an organisation. If an organisation is dealing
with a predictable, unchanging, environment, it pays to reduce
the internal degree of variety for the sake of efficiency. But if
the environment is changing rapidly, the organisation needs to
actively promote variety, so that someone, somewhere, will
be ready to meet each new challenge. If the organisation is
too rigid to cope with change, it fails.
Now, how fixed or changing is the electronic communications
environment for universities, and their readers and writers? What
is the appropriate degree of variety needed to cope with this
environment? Is it the same as the evolved consensus for
paper publications? Is it the same as the evolved consensus
for laying out campuses, students unions, libraries, machine
shops etc.? Or is it something that needs to be experimented
with, preferably accelerated by monitoring, evaluation and
research?
I suggest that if this is important to many universities, they
collectively fund some research into it - perhaps through
JISC. Since it is not only a UK phenomenon, JISC or Universities
UK might be a partner in a Framework 5 EU research consortium
(if it can be squeezed in under e-content, as IST has had its last
call). Don't wait for the big consultancy companies to do this for
us, then sell us back our own research.
Secondly, it is worth collecting together case studies of web
site development processes, with a view to publishing an
article addressing the marketing and management issues,
not just in Ariadne, but in a major management journal,
such as Harvard Business Review. If people have case
studies to contribute to such a review, e-mail me, and I'll
see about getting together a suitably broad range of
management researchers to analyse them.
Thirdly, it is worth collecting together as many estimates as
we can of the total time and effort that goes in to designing
web sites that meet their readers needs, as a guide to
university information strategy. Maybe that was already
done at the Belfast workshop. (I wasn't there, as we had
our own workshop on electronic public consultation at
the same time, http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/e/consult/).
--
Dr. David R. Newman, Queen's University Belfast, School of
Management and Economics, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland (UK)
Tel. (direct) +44 (0)28 9027 3643 (office) +44 (0)28 9033 5011
FAX: +44 (0)28 9033 5156 mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/
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