umanitoba.ca 4.0
So, the University released a new version of umanitoba.ca today. (A remedial history lesson is available.)
I can’t really say that I’m a huge fan — it looks very much like a high-design glossy pamphlet, and not enough like a friendly and inviting website for daily use. I guess that’s what they’re going for.
The picture at the top, while nice, isn’t really reflective of what’s going on at the university. It sure looks like a nice place to be, though. The picture of the girl, as vibrant as it may make us Manitobans seem, is even worse, for reasons to be mentioned later.
The bar in the middle (“Student Message”, “Upcoming Events”, etc.) seems out of place, placing items like “Web Registration”, “Summer Session 2005″ and “Cash For Books” in a much higher profile (albeit undeserved) location on the new website.
The “News & Features” and “Profile” sections are a welcome addition to the site and seem like a much more effective use of space than in version 3.0.
But how do you access the Google search engine for umanitoba.ca or get to Jump, the new student portal? To search, you have to a) notice the search box at the top-right, b) roll over it c) know to click on “U of M”, and then click on it, and d) type in your search. You’d never know that the search is powered by Google (i.e. it’s a damn good search) either until you get to the results page. Oh, and Jump? There’s a small link in grey text at the bottom of the page.
Is this how you promote the use of two amazing tools that the University quite obviously pumped a reasonable sum of money into?
Now for the girl. Joey Coleman has covered this very well, so I won’t rehash too much. Suffice it to say she is NOT a student at the U of M, and the Public Affairs department paid somewhere between a minor and majorly outrageous fee for the privilege of having her on the front page. Not only that, but you may remember her from such websites such as Dell and Gateway, amongst others. I’ve said enough… Read all about it.
Looking on the bright side, at least they didn’t change the rest of umanitoba.ca. After all, no one who is thinking about applying to the U of M ever looks there, do they?
April 13th, 2005 at 12:08 pm
From what I am hearing, the webmasters wanted to go to a content management system (CMS) for the entire site and someone in the Ivory Tower (Administration Building) said no but still wanted to launch this new campaign.
This is my speculation: I think the webmasters had rebuilt everything using CMS and had it ready to launch. Then someone in Admin vetoed it and they are currently redesigning each individual page. It would not surprise me that someone in Admin without any clue about web design and the work involve would be telling the webmasters exactly how to do things.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:37 am
[...] I posted the information and waited for the University to change their website. At 2pm CST, the University Administration had viewed my blog (they have checked it a couple times a day since February when I used it to mobilize students to demand better food service on campus) and were aware the “student” on the website had been exposed. Nothing happened that day. Overnight, the story spread. At 0122CDT, it was blogged about on steev’s thoughts. At the same time, the visits to my site were increasing. The information was out and students were disappointed in the University. When I went for coffee, many students were talking to me and could not believe this happened. Still, there was no action by the University. At 1432CDT, one of the College newspapers, The Paulinian, had picked up the story on their blog. There was still no action from the University. By the end of the day, the entire University knew what was happening. Not only that, many students were sending emails to the Director of Public Affairs and some to the University Vice-President (External). By this time, I had many students saying how they would have posed for free and I started to keep a list on my blog . By this time, I had an entire page of pictures with the “Dell Girl” on other websites. Yet, still no action from the University and no students had told me of getting responses to their emails. [...]