Evaluation of UMBC College of Engineering and Information Technology website

By

Emanuel Baisire

Introduction:

The paper evaluates UMBC’s college of engineering and information technology website

to determine whether it meets information architecture guidelines. The main objective of

the college of engineering and information technology website is to provide information

and other tools relevant to the university community and its external audience. The

website’s primary audience includes current students, faculty members, prospective

students and its alumni. The evaluation is based on principles of design categories, label

designs, navigation and usable web design. The critique looks at how UMBC’s college of

engineering and information technology website is designed in relation to the

recommended information architecture format.

Design of categories:

The left local navigation bar is not logically grouped together. The overall mental

model seem to reflect academic programs but items like “industry collaboration”

and “what’s new “ are not coherent with the organization scheme.

Some items on the website are placed in more than one category. For instance

“What’s new” on the left navigation bar is similar to “News and Events” in the

middle section of the main page. Such items tend to confuse users because it is

hard to determine the rationale and the distinction between the two.

The site seems to be grouped according to related items but there is no guidance

as to what each group represents. There are no section heads to distinguish

groupings. For instance the left navigation bar is not titled, middle content is titled

with inconsistent bold characters and what seem to be departmental groupings on

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the local right navigation bar have meaningless clickable graphical images. The

text indicating departments do not even appear to be links until they are clicked.

The images on top of the page are not appealing and not professionally presented.

It is evident that the photos were cut from different sources and it is hard to tell

what they represent.

The page design does not fit on the screen and it requires extensive scrolling. A

simple estimate indicated that the main page is equivalent to 13 screens when

scrolled. This result into a missed opportunity for users to read page contents

located in the middle or at the end of the page.

Labeling:

The white typed face on a red background “College of Engineering and

Information Technology” is presented like a normal heading when it is actually a

link to the home page. There is no indication that it is a link.

There are several inconsistencies in the way texts and font sizes are presented. On

the home page, text is presented in bold and italic format while in other secondary

pages, text and font size seem to be uniform.

One section of the home page” News and Events” has a labeled heading while

other sections do not have labeled headings.

The use of ambiguous labels like “Industry collaboration” and acronyms

“COE&IT” keeps the user guessing as to what kind of content is behind those

pages. Industry collaboration and COE&IT can mean different things to different

users.

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The use of non standardized iconic labels on the main page supposedly to

represent different departments does not serve any purpose. For instance the use

of a wire grid and a bridge to serve as a link to the civil and environment

engineering department is not obvious to everyone.

The website heavily uses contextual links like click here, here, read more, more

coet&it news with no explanatory notes.

Navigation

There exists item duplication on the main page. Although “undergraduate student

service” is an independent link on the main page, it is indicated again as a local

navigation link to the “undergraduate experience” page.

It is evident that some pages do not provide users with a sense of direction as to

where they are on the site. For instance visiting the “Advising” page when coming

from the Undergraduate student services page you feel lost because nothing

indicates that you are visiting that particular page. It is hard to have a feel of your

location on the site.

Local navigation bars have conflicting names. A link titled “student activities”

when clicked, the title to the same page becomes “student societies”. This might

confuse a user whose mind-set is centered on searching for student activities.

The home page is heavily concentrated with long sentences of inline contextual

navigation links that are not even relevant. Take the case of this inline contextual

navigation link: 64 universities that has received $200 million in research funding

from the U.S. Department of Defense. Professor Timothy Finin. The inline

contextual navigation links are detailed but redundant

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There are several inconsistent throughout the site. For instance some pages have a

local left navigation and others don’t have one. For instance “About Us” and

“Degree and Certificates” pages don’t have local navigation bars and lack contact

details at the bottom of their pages.

On first sight some pages appear blank not until you scroll down the page.

Impatient users are more likely not continue scrolling down in search for content.

For instance if you click the “transfer information” link which is under the

undergraduate student services page it is hard to view its hidden content.

The site has several dead end and broken links. The “what’s new” link on the

main page, “Profiles” link on the undergraduate experience page are all non

functional.

Usable web design:

The “About Us” page does not provide any form of summarized information

about the College of engineering and information technology. The page is further

crowded with non explanatory links to other university pages. This limits user’s

ability to learn more about the college of engineering unless they are willing to

browse the entire UMBC website.

The site does not warn users who are set to leave the COE&IT homepage through

links to other departmental sites and UMBC main page. When transferred to

departmental sites it is even not clear how to get back to the COE&IT homepage.

The homepage is also full of uncertain clickable links in form of graphical

images. The design of clickable images can be confused to be textbooks.

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Many web-pages do not open non-web documents in a new browser and there is

no option for saving downloadable documents. This is evident when you want to

learn more about “COEIT academic programs” and “fast facts”.

There is no uniformity in the way links are presented. Some link colors are blue

and others are red. This becomes difficulty for a casual visitor to determine which

link color to expect on different pages.

The search page is well designed and relevant but the global navigation on the

search result is different from the home page. There is also no link to go back to

the homepage of the college of engineering and information technology.

Some pages are not updated periodically. For instance the “Graduate experience”

web-page was last updated in March, 2007. This undermines user’s confidence

and trust about the validity of the page content.

Conclusion:

Although the college of engineering and information technology webpage fulfils some

information architecture guidelines, there is a need to redesign the entire website. Current

students and faculty members may find the site easy to navigate and search but

prospective students, alumni and external audience encounter many of the discussed

challenges. For the site to be user-friendly the home page design size should fit on the

screen and the number of contextual and regular links on the homepage be minimized.

Users should also be provided with a sense of direction as to where they are, which

website there are about to be redirected and how to get back to the college of engineering

and information technology homepage.

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Reference:

Karat, J.,C. Karat, and J. Ukelson, “ Affordances, motivation and the design of user interfaces”, Communications of the ACM, vol.43, no.8, pp. 49-51, 2000.

Nielsen, Jakob; Loranger, Hoa. (2006). Prioritizing Web Usability. Berkeley: New Riders Press.

Rosenfeld, Louis ; Morville, Peter. (2006). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd edition, Sebastopol: O'Reilly media Inc.

Internet Source:

Bevan N (1998) Usability issues in website design. In: Proceedings of UPA ‘98’, Washington DC, 23-26 June, 1998. Retrieved July 31, 2009 from http://www.usabilitynet.org/papers/usweb98.pdf

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