www.nrhs-technology.org [Critique Requested]

Richard Yanni · #1 (**permalink**) 10-29-2003, 01:53 PM

To All:

Please review and critique our educational site:

www.nrhs-technology.org

We've got a pretty tough hide, so constructive criticism is invited--no holds barred.

Thanks in advance for your help.

All the best,

Richard

elearning · #2 (**permalink**) 10-29-2003, 02:16 PM

Hi Richard,

Nice site.

I like the color schemes, although I'm not a big fan of black backgrounds - it is well done.

I understand you're an US based site - however I've always found "flags" to be cheesy. Why not make it a static image, smaller in size and place it under the picture on the right side of the screen - beside the text "NRHS Technology" ??

I don't like all the centering you've done. It takes away from the site.

The statement "All Students..." - that would be fine centered, but make it a little larger and closer to the top of the frame/table.

Change "The Mission..." to "Our Mission: ...". Ideally this block of text should be kept together. Splitting it up the way you did looks odd.

The section that starts "All Students..." again - centering is odd on pages, you're trying very hard to make a professional image (which I think you've done) but get rid of centering. Left align will look better.

I like how you've used Flash on the site - well done.

The flash in the middle of the page should be centered within the box. Right now, it looks to be left aligned.

Before the start of each point, leave an additional line break.

The points at the bottom of the page - left aligned.

Get rid of the "counter" - looks odd.

The copyright info - make it right aligned.

Your menu seems fine, I see you tried to alphabetize everything, but this not necessary. You may want to group related items. For instance, FAQ, FEEDBACK, NEWS and SITE MAP may be one grouping.

I'm not a fan of page transitions - they take too long. Normally if I get a page that uses transitions, I never go back to the site.

I like the Calendar - but why not integrate the sites colors as well? If you could make it smaller you could show the calendar using the same template as used for the rest of the sites pages.

I can't always tell that items are "clickable" for instance, on the Courses page - I didn't realize I could click on a course name until I went to the bottom of the table. Maybe move this under the heading for the table.

You've got a right and left column. On the main page the right column shows up at the far right of the screen - however on other pages it "moves" depending on the length of content you have. Make your "content" section a set width (50%, 80%).

Otherwise I really enjoyed the site. The color scheme is well done.

Regards,

Mohammed

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard Yanni

To All:

Please review and critique our educational site:

www.nrhs-technology.org

We've got a pretty tough hide, so constructive criticism is invited--no holds barred.

Thanks in advance for your help.

All the best,

Richard

Dcrux · #3 (**permalink**) 10-29-2003, 04:43 PM

The site is nearly at that point where opinion matters less than interaction testing and observed behavior.

That said, I have corresponded with those like Shapiro, coauthor of Information Literacy as a Liberal Art. The site lacks something Richard Mitchell could put his finger on, but it merely left me puzzled.

David Sholle writes:

Quote:

The use of the word "information" as a descriptive adjective has exploded to the point of near absurdity: information age, information society, information economy, information superhighway, information millennium, information revolution. But what does this word "information" mean in these constructions and how did it become the new keyword of our social formation’s self-definition? At first, it appears that the definition of "information" is clear and unproblematic: we all know, in common sense, what it is. But, immediately, it becomes evident that we can’t exactly specify the term in its everyday usage, and that the term is being used in some other way when attached to the words "society, " "age," etc. In fact, it appears that "information" is either used too ambiguously, as a collection place for multiple significations that are generated in the application of the term to a bewildering range of different practices; or that "information" is used too precisely, that is, that its meaning becomes attached to narrowly specific technological functions, such as those generated in the field of information science or engineering.

As primitive and obscure as it is, information technology does exist. Running a buzzwork check on a single page of your site turns up a score of 420. While this may put you in good stead for pagerank, it does not when the subject is information.

To sum up, the site has a lot of content. That is not the same as information. Running a list of less than informative buzzwords against this content turns up a pretty high score. I would suggest, based on the theme and purpose of the site, you might want to concentrate more on the information the technology is supposed to provide.