I chose to look at the web site for the elementary school/kindergarten my daughter will attend next fall. I did not like the site design overall.  The initial layout template uses too many different elements (colors, graphics, and content), and the repeated elements on the internal pages are not useful.  Navigation was not intuitive, as links seldom took me where I expected, and it was difficult to figure out where I was, or how to get back to what I wanted without starting again.  I asked two parents whose children currently attend the school about the web site and received the following responses.

1. Mother of a kindergartner.  This mother is not a particularly savvy user and uses her computer predominantly for email and work. She has never used the web site and did not know about the class journals/blogs nor was ever told about it at parent-teacher meetings.  She had no particular interest in the site because all the info she needs comes home by “backpack mail” or from listserv messages.

2. Mother of 2^nd grader.  This mother works in IT and I would consider her a savvy user, though not an excited one—she uses the web as a tool, not for interest/exploration. She said she used the web site more when her child was in kindergarten, but just out of interest rather than necessity because all necessary info comes from listserv messages.  She has used it for email to contact staff as part of PTA event coordination, and to find out more about programs or events.  She was aware of the blogs, but as the entries are not balanced in terms of teacher use, and her child’s teacher doesn’t really use it, she doesn’t use the site much.  This mother pulled up the site as we were talking on the phone, and it was interesting to listen to her hunt around for something specific, as it took quite a while for her to figure out where to go.  When I mentioned some of the design elements that bothered me, she noted them, but did not have as strong a reaction to them.

My conclusion is that this is not a web site geared to visitors—it is for those who already know what they are looking for, and once they have found it, regardless of their first experience, they will go directly there the next time.  I have a feeling I will be frustrated next year, because all these things are probably going to bother me—I may read the class blog (if there is one) from time to time, but like the two other parents I spoke with will probably rely on backpack info and listserv messages.   We’ll see…

Page Design

Colors:

The first thing that struck me was the colors.  Background colors are purplish pink, dark green, royal blue, and orangey salmon pink—the purplish color of the banner is much brighter than the other colors and clashes with them and it consistently draws the eye upward where there is really no information.  Text colors are black, blue, white, green, and a medium gray.  Table border colors are not consistent either, so basically wherever you are on the page you are dealing with at least three to four different color elements.  The colors might be fun for kids, but this is not a kid site.

Placement & Graphics:

The purplish banner is consistent on all pages, but depending on where you look, the subtitle looks off center.  Although the subtitle is centered in relation to the page width, because it is above the middle table of the page rather than closer to the title, your eye is drawn downwards, where it then looks very askew with the other page elements.  The picture on the banner (top left) is smaller than the vertical navigation column and so again looks odd to the eye.  There are five pictures above the fold, but they are distracting rather than informative, except maybe for the picture of the principal.  The grid of pictures at the top of the left-column navigation bar pulses (with Flash) when you mouse over it, and when you click on a picture you are redirected to an outside site (Flickr.com) where you can view hundreds of pictures from school events.  Because this grid appears before the navigation links it trumps the priority of the links, which I think detracts from making the navigation easier.

Navigation

Links:

The main links are Home, Calendar, Classes, Programs, Library, Staff, Resources, and Visitors.  The following two pics are from the Classes page.  It is as though there are really too many options (like the colors)—you could click on a tab, which takes you to a Team Page for all the teachers in a particular grade, or you could click on the Team Page link, or you could go to the individual class blogs.  As a side note, I’m not really sure why they set these up as blogs (which are through Blogger.com) as I never saw a comment posted.  The second picture is of an individual teacher/class page.  As you can see, it doesn’t seem to have been updated in a while (March 2006), but this is not the class page, it is only her part of the grade’s team page (confused? I was).  Then if you click on her name under the Contributors menu, you are taken to the blogger.com site—dead end.  I won’t go through all the major links, but you get the idea.

 Overall:

Every page was a different width and had different elements, which I found disconcerting.  The major navigation links table appears on every page at the top left (except the home page because they are trumped by the Flash picture grid), but not at the bottom, which is a problem as most pages are quite long.  Not a thumbs up.