Witte Museum
http://wittemuseum.org/
Blanton Museum of Art
http://www.blantonmuseum.org/index.html

The Blanton museum of art website is not attractive at all and is poorly organize. The web designer left a lot of white space which could have been use to make the web site more interesting. White space is the first thing that Nielsen discusses in his book. Also web designer did a poor job with the navigation of the site. In my opinion I think he focus too much on navigation Nielsen says that the navigation should be a small percent of a web page where the rest is for context. As for Whitte museum web site it much more attractive, but they could have probably done better. Their navigation is organized and not spread out all over the page. It is easier for the user to navigate around the web site. Users who visit the Whitte museum home page don’t have to scroll down the page to find what they are looking for. The web site has current information on what programs are available at the museum for visitor to see. The Blanton doesn’t list what events are currently available on their home page. The users have to go to the program and event links to find that information. Nielson says that the home page is important as far as context because it is what keeps the user attracted to the web site.

Neilson Reading 1

The UT LAITS Homepage consists of a very simple layout. It has a header and 16 picture links, accompanied by a short link description. The homepage is basically a navigation page. Once enter the site by clicking one of the navigation links you are brought to the corresponding page and all the links from the homepage are now at the top. This is nice in that it is consistent throughout the site. The navigation remains at the top. The only problem with this is that it often clutters the page, because there are so many navigation links. It would be nice if the links were condensed into groups. Nielson says that you should have short and meaningful headings and for the most part, the LAITS site does this. He also says that you should start content with a conclusion. Basically, this means that when a reader is scanning, he should be able to look right under a heading and find out what this paragraph is all about. The LAITS content structure does this most of the time, but not in every instance. One suggestion I would make would be to make the content more approachable. When I go through the links in the LAITS site, almost all of the inner-pages are cluttered and not very welcoming. I would like to suggest more bullets, to get straight to the point facts. I also think the thumbnail size pictures are not very helpful, with the exception of the courses page. I think this site could use larger pictures that are more relevant to each page. I almost feel as if I am reading a report when I am reading through the site. I would like to be able to skim through the page rather that read through every heading and every paragraph. In the NYU ITS site their front page is totally different from the LAITS site. It has the navigation on the side, and updated content in the middle. I think this is a much better approach for ease of use. It has 5 main links on the side, which then branch into many other sub-links. The advantage to this is that you are not overwhelmed with 16 unique links to pick from. First you have 5, then you have many, but they are all related to the same category you chose to unravel. Once, you go to a page, it has the standard navigation on the left, but also has “anchored links” within the page, so you don’t have to scroll through the whole page to find what you are looking for. It does a good job of letting you know where you are and where to click to get to where you want to go. Another good thing about the site is that it has a search function. I think this is fantastic. If you know exactly what you are looking for, it is worth a shot to search for it. Overall I think the NYU’s site is much easier to use. The LAITS site tried to be more fun with the pictures and picture links, but I think for this to be effective, you have to make the pictures have significance, so that it helps the user, not deters him/her from the subject at hand.

Both sites provide IT content and services to students, the question is, who does it better and how do they accomplish it?
This post will look at both sites and compare them based upon usability guidelines.

COlA Site:
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/its/
USC Site:
http://www.usc.edu/isd/it/index.html

Well, the first thing that strikes me is the big difference between the two sites' respective homepages. The Cola page relies on graphical links for it's navigation, with a lot of white space in b/w their links. The USC page has less graphics, but contains much more dense text with very little white space. I think it is easier to quickly scan the Cola page for information as opposed to USC's example. Although some may argue that Cola's graphics requires more download time, I think users would probably get to the content faster overall using the graphic method as opposed to having to scan through lots of text. However, USC's home page does include a search bar for locating information quicker. Even still, with all the clutter, I don't think that the search field stands out as much as it should.

As for internal navigation, I give Cola the upper hand. Every page has a corresponding graphic letting users know where they are, and the navigation links at the top tell users where they have been. The USC ITS site has neither of these. They have textual headers for each page and links do not change color after you have visited them. I do like how USC displays the main school link prominently at the top of the page. The UT home page link is very small at the bottom left of the page.

Whereas Cola has unique pages for every link, USC simply repeats the same info over and over again through it's links. For example, clicking the students section provides the same content a user would see as if they had clicked the Staff/Faculty link instead. Very redundant. One small advantage to the USC system is that it keeps all contact information in a centralised link. Cola spreads out contact information across many pages which slows down a user looking for multiple contacts.

Minus the search function on the USC page, I think Cola outdoes them in most everyother way. Cola is organized and doesn't contain too much clutter, it uses white space well and provides just the right amount of content. USC ISD-ITS seems squashed and puts too much repetitive information in front of the user.

1. COLA ITS
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/its/
2. UC Berkley ITS
http://comp-resources.berkeley.edu/

Homepage/Navigation:
1. It's a more attractive homepage that appears to be more organized, more colors to interest visitors, and simple navigation. However, the images all have alternative titles so that visitors do not have to wait for them to load.
2. There may be an information overload for users. The navigation menu on the left has extraneous words to describe it. For example, "For all new users" instead of just "New Users." This wording makes the webpage more impersonal and informal when it's supposed to be more of a professional and businesslike. To minimize space, the website could take the first half of the content out where it describes the abbreviation links to the left, but spelling out the entire link, and once users click on it, they get a more in depth description.
Resolution:
1. The site is not restricted to a 800+ resolution. If the user has a smaller screen, not as small as Pocket PC size however, they could easily view the page without horizontal scrolling.
2. Same.
User Text Preferences
1. Because it's all images, users who may want to increase the text size of the navigation can't. Users also can't adjust the size of the text links because it is locked.
2. The only text that changes size on the page are the headers, leaving the information and navigation users most want to see locked in their sizes.
Loading Times
1. By having almost all navigation and content as images, it may deter users will slower connection speeds for staying until the page finishes loading.
2. Having only one image and the rest text minimizes loading time.

My job at hand here is to compare the COLA ITS to that of the University of Colorado Boulder ITS.
In terms of white space I feel that the UT website has more and really shouldn't. I feel the website's homepage though it gets its point across is rather bland and needs filling, it just has too much white space not enough information and access is directly available from the homepage. Contrastingly I am a big fan of CU's ITS. It has just the right amount of white space and has enough information on its page to easily direct a user wherever they'd like to be directed. Navigation wise, both sites have their pros. The UT site makes it easy to get to where you're going as everything is categorized the way it is, however, it makes for a lot of clicking and redirecting to get where you need to go. But this is done convincingly enough to say that this way works for this site. UTs website has some upside here as it has a menu for all of its pages on every page presented. CU does not offer this however, it is still more organized as it uses chunking and includes a search engine. The organization on both sites need work, but the homepage for the CU site is much better then that of the COLA site as it makes directing yourself quicker (even though the COLA site is still easily accessible) and doesn't waste time with a splash screen. Both sites also respond very quickly as they should and resolution seems to work perfectly fine with both.
The simplicity is somewhat equal in both sites, however the CU Boulder site is just more appealing as it can draw the viewer visually without distracting them. I feel if the two sites were able to combine, using the CU's homepage and the UTs second layer page layouts (with navigation menus) could form a very effective ITS site.

The navigation of the COLA ITS site is much poorer than that of the Monash site, the Monash site has everything grouped into categories, color coded and all links are underlined text as opposed to being images. The COLA ITS site also has no search function for searching it for important data, while the Monash site not only has one, but it is featured on the opening page. The file structure of the COLA ITS page is erratic, for some things the URL is ../its/pagename.html, while other times its pagename.la.utexas.edu, while the Monash site has all of its links link to ../pagename/ where each folder has its index.html file, keeping the URL very clear, clean and consistent. The Monash site has a much better design and a definite edge over the COLA site.

I am comparing the COLA ITS website and the Austin Community College (ACC) Instructional Computing & Technology Service.
In terms of navigation the ACC ITS doesn’t have a link to ACC’s homepage but COLA ITS doesn’t do a much better job either because the small icon that links COLA ITS to UT’s homepage is hard to be noticed by the browser.
In terms of response time both website has a very good response time. It takes less than 1 second to get a response after clicking a link.
In terms of link description I think ACC ITS have a much better description. As a student I can see which links that are relevant to me. It has Student FAQs link and Faculty FAQs link. Link description at the COLA ITS are not self explanatory I have to browse through a couple of links to look for which links that are relevant to me.
Overall, to me both website have good technical features but in terms of user experience I think ACC ITS is easier to browse through. The links description and the information provided are more self explanatory.

I am comparing UT's COLA ITS site with that of NYU's ITS site.

Already you can get a feel for the difference between the two sites - UT's has graphic icon links to the different sections whereas NYU's has links and updates of information (news, notices, etc). Both provide a search engine to search the site, but only NYU keeps the search engine tool on every page. However, only NYU has up to date information about virus alerts, and any other useful info to its audience.

The navigation also differs between the two, where UT has the navigation bar on top, and NYU has it on the left hand side. UT only offers a one level deep navigation tool, where NYU has a drop structure that leads to more links that are organized by topic. NYU also has a drill down at the top of every page to show you how you got there (but you can't click on it to go back a page which would be even better) Both navigation tools stay present despite any page you go to. Well, not UT's homepage since it is just a listing of links.

The overall look and feel to the websites differ, as NYU seems more structured and professional. Both have resolutions that are small enough for practically any monitons. Both also have sans serif font, which is better for human eyes when reading anything on a screen versus paper. Both have enough white space to make the page seem not too busy and cluttered.

In conclusion, I prefer the NYU ITS site because it has better content and is more structurally sound and organized. It is more user friendly and seems to follow more of the web standards that make it user friendly.

Both webpages start off with a simple portal of links, with little else on the index pages. While both splash pages use a lot of white space mixed with the actual content, neither seems to be an efficient placement of information. The COLA ITS splash page makes a random scattering of graphic navigation, while the Brown Urban Studies index has tiny text links squeezed close togehter that could cause difficult usage for many users. Neither websites provide any sort of search tool to allow users to find specific content.

Upon entering the COLA ITS secondary pages, the information is presented in long pages of text with the navigation at the top in simple text links. Despite seemingly a lot of white space, the layout of information is overwhelming with its abundant small text and often crammed-together information. The layout of text and color scheme is not appealing and potentially makes users' eyes tire from reading. Most of the text is the same color and gives off a monotonous feel. Users have to scroll back up in order to utilize the navigation system.

The Brown Urban Studies secondary pages present information in a much more visually appealing manner. White space is used efficiently to center the important information and set off titles and links, and the font is larger. The navigation is more pleasing, as it is both on the side and at the bottom and the users do not have to scroll back to the top to be able to click on navigation. Graphics and text are used neatly and interchanged well to give users an easier, more pleasing way of seeking information.

Though both websites have weak splash/index pages, the Brown Urban Studies redeems itself with the actual layout used throughout the website. I find the COLA ITS website to be harder to read and less user-friendly in general.

I am comparing UT with Texas Tech’s ITS site. First of all they only had one ITS for all the colleges while UT had a specific ITS site just for the College of Liberal Arts. As a matter of fact, just about every university I visited had the same situation. The organization of the site at Texas Tech is very confusing. The UT site may be simple and monotonous, but at least you know what specific topic you are about to look at when you click on a button. It may not the best description, but I had a hard time even telling what was an equivalent site on Texas Tech’s
site. It seems as if TT’s site is more of a just information about technology whether than information technology services and that is at the “IT Help Central.” The TT page is left justified and is pretty skinny, therefore there is a gray section by itself on the right side of the page that I don’t care for too much. The UT site is more justified to the left as well, but the site takes up the whole screen. The UT site does a good job of deep linking, even if it is not a very aesthetic one, it is easy to get lost in the rabbit hole of the TT site. Overall, I like the UT site and when we get done with it, it will be even better.
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/its/
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/helpcentral/

I compared the UT COLA ITS site to the Monroe Community College ITS site. The page design of the COLA ITS website is one that I think needs much work. For starters, it has a terrible homepage design with relatively no introduction to what the actual site is about. It is tough to answer the “what does this site do?” question just by looking at the homepage. The site has large wide white open spaces which look really nice and graphics that seem to blend in seamlessly. The possible problem with this is that users on a slow connection may have trouble downloading all the images at once and may not realize there are other sections to the site. The other problem with it is people with incredibly high resolutions, such as me, have trouble seeing the small font size of the already made graphic. Once a link is clicked, you are taken to a set of similar pages with all of the links moved up to a top bar.
The Monroe CC site starts out with a pretty cluttered homepage. It is all white and shows a mission statement of what the site is about. This is great and all, but directly under that there is an outline of what the site offers and it is just long and not user friendly. The top navigation bar seems to always be there no matter where you go which is nice. Although I found it to be a little annoying that the exact same navigation bar was on the top AND bottom of the site. The functionality is great, but it just looks bad. The site could possible benefit from a few more aesthetically pleasing graphics here and there.
For some odd reason there is a pull down menu at the top right of the screen which doesn’t seem to go anywhere.
The ITS Site is a little bit prettier, but the Monroe site seems to be a bit more descriptive on what kind of site it is. It better informs the unknown user of what they have just walked into. Although a student needing any of these sites for a class shouldn’t have much trouble navigating around.

I compared the UT COLA ITS website (http://www.laits.utexas.edu/its/) to the Colorado College ITS website (www.coloradocollege.edu/its).

Although both ITS websites contain a lot of empty white space, the white space on the UT COLA website seems to give a free, wide open feeling. I think that the navigation on the top and left side of the Colorado College website is very distracting. It’s so distracting to the point where I can’t even focus on the main body text of the page. The left navigation uses boxes with different shades of blue for background and white and blue for text. The top navigation uses shades of brown for background and then darker shades for text. Overall, it’s just very big eyestrain. However, one advantage that the Colorado College website has over the UT COLA one is that it uses mostly text. The UT page uses all images for the main page. It is recommended to not put text in images when possible. There is even an image on the left side that consists strictly of blank white pixels! COLA’s sub-pages make it very easy to focus on the content and the navigation is small and neatly placed at the top so it does not cause any obstruction. There are headlines that help when scanning the page for information. Colorado College is not as easy to navigate, but the sub-pages have the content neatly organized with headlines as well. There is one thing I notice when clicking links on both sites. On the Colorado College site, once links are clicked, they clearly change color to notify the user that he/she has visited that page already. Links on the COLA site do not change color at all, so it is hard to tell which pages have been visited or not. In conclusion, I think that the UT COLA ITS website has some advantages over the Colorado College ITS website, and overall it feels less cramped and confusing.

THE USC ITS Home page starts off with a brief description of what the ITS department will be able to offer the users followed by contact information and a helpdesk mailto link. At least on the USC site I have a [very] weak understanding of what to expect while the UT COLA forces the user into a hunt-and-peck mode while you not only try to find what you are looking for, but also if the services is even offered.

The USC Navigation has a few redundant links. Two links at the top are indentical to both each other and one link on the left navigation. The UT site does not have any redundant links on the home page, however, there are many categories that should be combined. THe user is offered too many options up front. Also, on the "about page" of the UT site, almost all of the links at the top navigation bar are duplicated in the body of the text, except for the "scanning services" link. This is apparantly the only place to find this services, which seems misplaced. Inside of the UT site, the top navigation bar has all of the links from the first page, but in a different order. This threw me off as a casual user and put another bump in the road.

Thankfully there are no ads on the sites, so the structure is mostly body and navigation. There seems to be plenty of whitespace to the right of the pages, so the pages themselves are quite small. While viewing both pages at 640x480 resolution I noticed that even though the pages are small, 10% to 15% of the right side of the body was left off of the main screen. This should be acceptable as most people do not use this resolution any longer, and those who are are most likely not bothered by scrolling to the right.

The UT site uses the color blue for it's links, without any distiguishing color changes between the previously visted and new links. Nielsen stresses that there must be a way for users to know where they have been. The USC site also has no color change, but it's base color is red, which as a standard denotes a page that has been previously visited, making this site less intuitive for the new user. Thankfully, both sites retain the underline of their links.

Both sites load quickly on a broadband connection. THe USC has only one top banner that remains static through out the site, while the UT site has a few small graphics that do not slow anything down while they make the site more pleasing to the eye.

Both websites could stand to have improvements made, but as far as content delivery goes, if the user is determined, he/she will be able to find the information they are looking for....eventually.

First off, I was going to compare the COLA ITS site with the TX State Liberal Arts Computing and Technical Support page, but there's practically nothing on there, and it just tells you to the TX State Technology Resources page.

The UT COLA ITS page has nice graphics, but honestly, I think that's probably the only good thing about it. All it is is a bunch of links to different pages, but it doesn't give any info on what those pages have in them other than just the title. How is someone supposed to know what the LACIL page has in it, or what the Audio Catalog is, and so on. On the other hand, the TX State site has only one graphic, and that's the search bar at the top. Even though the TX State gives a little bit more background information on the links on the page, there's just way too many links. There's duplicate links and all the blue hyperlinks are distracting and annoying. When I look at the site, it makes me not want to read it because it just seems unorganized and like a person just starting out learning HTML put it together. It seems like a site map for a aesthetically better site. I honestly don't know which site I would choose over the other. I know my eyes find the UT COLA ITS site to be pleasing, but once I start reading it, I'm not really sure if I gather enough information to know where I want to look within the links for what I want to know or what info I'm looking for. I learn more about what each link in the TX State has to offer in it, but my eyes just don't like it at all. I think it's good that they provided some examples of what's in the pages, but I think they could've left the links out of the short descriptions. I say just have the links in the following pages, not the descriptions. The UT site is much less cluttered, so that's a definite plus for them.

One drawback to the UT site is that it's basically all images, and for a machine that's on a dial-up connection, I suppose it could be a little slow, but I believe the images are small enough that they shouldn't cause any slowdown problems. The TX State site has only that one graphic, so there won't be any slowdown problems on it.

I like the fact that on the UT site, no matter what link you go to, you have the navigation bar at the top that allows you to jump to any of the original linked pages. The TX State one only provides you with a link back to the main Tech Resources page and the TX State home page. Thus, I'd say the UT site is much more navigable.

Whitespace: Both websites use a substantial amount of whitespace to separate content and navigation. Though it feels like there is too much whitespace on the pages.

Navigation: Both websites effectively use the logo as a link to the index page. Navigation links are also retained on each page. The LBJ ITS site provides breadcrumb trails that help users know the current location of the page they are viewing. The COLA ITS failed to provide this, but it might be because their pages do not go deep enough. The links on the COLA ITS are underlined and easily locatable. Both sites do not use uninformative links such as "click here". The LBJ filed to provide useful file size on their ITS Video Tutorials on this page: http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/its/tutorials.php .

Reponse Times: Both sites consist primarily of text, therefore load times are less than the 10 second rule mentioned in the book.

Resolution: Both sites appear to be small enough for even small resolution monitors and printers.

Home Page: The LBJ ITS provides a search engine tool at the bottom of the page while the COLA does not. Although the LBJ ITS includes a search engine tool, it is poorly located.

Splash Screen: COLA ITS uses a splash page as its index page which deviates in layout from all the other pages. This is particulary distracting for visitors. While the LBJ ITS does not have a splash page and jumps right into providing the contact information for the department.

Conclusion: To me, both websites are not visually appealing. The major downside of the COLA ITS homepage is the index splash screen. Other than that, the content is usually presented in a consistent manner. The LBJ ITS, though slightly easier to navigate, it is hard to distinguish between what is a link and what is not.

The UT ITS site is equal in how much is used on navigation and information. It is not overly complicated. It has navigation bars on the side with information in the center going down. With the white backgroud, its makes it easier to read the text and see what is on the site. The Texas A&M ITS site has good enough information and does not focus much on navigation. Navigation is much harder to find because it is not on the sides like most other sites. The information that is on the Texas A&M ITS site is really good information. The site is covered with a lot of graphics. It may draw some people, but a lot of other people are looking for an easy interface. The UT ITS site in my opinion is simplier than the Texas A&M ITS site. When I go into the UT ITS site I see an active news module. It is easy to see the new updates to the site and around campus. Unlike the A&M ITS site it has goals which makes it seems like its more about learning. The UT site is full of information and is not limited to research. You can get help if you are having computer problems. A&M's site wouldn't be as helpful. A search engine is on the UT site which is very helpful if someone can not find what they are looking for. Taking a look at the A&M site, it does not have a search engine. Search engines are very useful and make it easier for users to navigate through the site. Both sites do not have any slowdown problems. Users would not like to go to a site that has slowdown problems because it is time consuming.