August
Brown’s New Look
Brown University announced a public beta of their new homepage design this morning. Coming at a time when many college homepages are reaching a kind of threshold of usability and design challenges, Brown has been one of the first to step through with a refreshingly different approach.
The design uses JavaScript to allow for some segmentation of their audience right on the first page. Sliding “cards” combine topical and audience-specific navigation. The site also uses what I have seen described as a “Yahoo style directory structure” to offer the most important links in each category while also giving the visitor a sense of what each category is about.
The Brown design has several items that I find a little annoying. One is the left justification that leaves a large chunk of negative space on the right when viewed at a large resolution. Another is that they are using a picture of a building in their admission category. Others have found the behavior of the sliding cards to be somewhat counter-intuitive, as the link you are trying to click on has a tendency to fly up and out from under your mouse.
Despite the few objections, the new Brown homepage is one of the first in what will undoubtedly be a continuing exodus into interesting and unique attempts to conquer the many usability and design problems exclusive to higher education websites. A very nice job overall.
(They also unveiled a nice new directory.)
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