Participants were able to leave comments as they completed the card sort. Comments are not linked to a particular item or category. Names were changed to participant group(s) to give the comments more context. Comments are listed here in the order received. Each comment can be linked to the card sort that the commenter submitted. This would add minimal anecdotal information and is not done in this study for reasons of privacy.
For analysis, see Comment Themes.
Focus Group, Faculty
Some things should be linked in more than one category, e.g. Calendars….should be in academics, but also in Faculty and Students, and perhaps also in About Williams; 62 Centre calendar in Events but also in Arts…
Multimedia: I don’t see this as something I would go looking for. I would assume that podcasts/videos would be listed where they applied…e.g. videos of art events in Arts, of athletic events in Athletics….etc.
ITC, Staff
several of the items might be listed in multiple places, e.g,, honor system could justifiably be listed in academics and about Williams.
ISG, Alumni, Staff
Suggest changing “Admission” to “Admission and Aid”.
Some things, like “Registrar” and “Information Technology,” I wanted to put in more than one place.
“College Administration” might be shortened to “Administration” and put on the President’s Office site.
So far I’m a proponent of having a separate home page when accessed from machines on campus, which for me complicates this exercise.
Focus Group, Alumni
I would link Daily Messages in both Students and Faculty sections. I would link I am Williams in both About Williams and Admissions. I would link Course Catalog in both Students and Academics. I would link Honor System in About Williams, Students, and Academics. I would link Libraries in Academics and Students. I would link webmail in Students and Faculty and Staff. I would link Information Technology in Students and Faculty and Staff. I would link Room Scheduler in Students and Faculty and Staff. Both Admissions and Students should have Financial Aid sections — but probably tailored to different audiences and needs.
Faculty
Some items should appear in more than one category, e.g., the alumni directory should appear in both Directories and Alumni; academic calender should appear in Students, Faculty, and Events; etc.
Faculty
Link to Peoplesoft and Glow in both Student and Faculty/Staff sections. Link to Financials in Faculty/Staff section.
Faculty
Put Webmail under Faculty and Staff and under Students. Others might go in two categories.
Staff
Category “multimedia” is not the right term. User would not know what that is
“Especially for visitors” is a hodge podge of items that don’t go together. The items under this category have already been addressed in other categories and this one should be eliminated
“Communications Office” is one of many offices and should be in the directory but not have it’s own item for sorting. I placed it in the Directories section for lack of another place. I don’t think it should be on the top homepage.
“Especially for Faculty & Staff” is another hodge podge category with too many unrelated items on the page. This should be broken down to two items, one for faculty and the other for staff. The two groups have diverse needs. I could not sort this one.
“Conference office” like “Communications office” should be in the directories subcategory and not have it’s own item for sorting.
“Publicity” is a category that should be within the Communications Office but probably should not have been on the sort list. I placed it in Directories because there was no other natural place to put it.
I placed “Bookstore” under “Academics” but it could also be repeated under “Faculty” and “Students” headings.
Staff
Put Directories and Calendars under the About Williams heading.
Place some information in multiple categories (such as linking to the campus map in the About Williams section and in the Admissions section)
Drop the visitors heading and put info for visitors in the About Williams and the Admissions categories.
Combine News and Events into one category.
Put Faculty info under Academics.
Add a separate “Campus Life & Community” category instead of just “Students” heading.
Expand Administration category to “Administration and Services”
Give “Search Williams” its own heading
Give Athletics its own heading.
Put staff info under “Administration and Services” heading.
Thanks for the chance to offer my two cents! What ever you come up with, I’m sure will work well.
Student
WSO
Student Life
Dining menus
Staff
Theres a lot of calendars. Maybe everything public should go on one calendar and anything for staff only to Daily Messages
Focus Group, Staff
Like most other schools, I would entitle “Admission” tab as “Admission and Financial Aid”
Focus Group, Faculty
Faculty and Staff boxes could be joined into one. What about a WCMA homepage?
Awkward fits (or appropriate for multiple boxes, not just one): Webmail, Multimedia, Athletics
ITC, Faculty
I put IT into the Faculty box, but it should be in the Students and Staff boxes as well. Especially for Faculty and Staff should be duplicated in the Staff box. Multimedia should be at the department or individual level. The Webmail interface is best left as a URL that is not accessible via click.
ISG, Faculty, Staff
Financial Aid hompage should also be in the Admission box
Faculty
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr do not belong on the College’s homepage.
Alumni
Oh boy….not easy. I’m so confugeled I’m not sure whether to put the Dean of Faculty under Administration or under Faculty. If you can make any sense out of this mishmash you’re doing mighty well.
Focus Group, Faculty
We should rethink the current information architecture, where the home page leads to several sub-menus and sub-pages (like “for students”) with large numbers of poorly-arranged links that go deep into various places in the college site. Instead, the home page should link to the FRONT PAGES of a small number of more carefully maintained and formatted sub-sites tied to major interests, like Admissions, Athletics, Alumni Office, etc. Those sites are models. Communications and Events should have a site on a par with these, visually and in terms of information layout. We should build similarly appealing sub-site for Academics (though it could remain relatively static once built). A lof of the items in the lefthand column don’t need to be accessible directly from the home page, which should have many fewer submenus and should only link to things inside these larger sub-sites for a very small number of things that are absolutely mission critical, like the college calendar and financial aid policy. The home page needs to reflect the range of the Williams experience (academics, arts & music, and athletics, for example) should not be designed as a convenient starting point for faculty who want to schedule a seminar room or students who want to check their webmail. Let them bookmark those pages themselves. It is our face to the world, and it needs to do that one thing and do it well. On the other hand, the search function should be much more robust to get users searching for specific things to the right place quickly. The default Google search in site plug-in is not good enough at this. (Try typing “webmail” or “email” into the search box, for example.)
Focus Group
This was hard for me.
It would be great for parents if the calendar could have overlapping calendars, like a Google calendar where you would click, say academic calendar and men’s tennis and jazz band, to find when your son would be available for a visit. If this could be uploaded into your own calendar, that would be bonus. It would also be nice to have a calendar for Freshman events (orientation, parents weekend.)
I think of the “shortcuts” as customized webpages for these populations, that the students page would have the webmail, bookstore, clubs, etc. Another “especially for visitors” to include visitors guide and “especially for media” to include faculty experts. Also especially for prospective students.
This is getting a little bulky, so maybe not all of these categories. For the novice user, they may not know what you have to offer on the website. All information would be accessible to all groups, e.g. the campus map, but it would be prominently displayed to the visitors.
Faculty
because the categories are organized by who reports to whom, it’s almost impossible to find mailroom hours/for example, how many people have the patience to go via dining services??? it makes more sense to me to start with the elements and build up into some of these categories. ex “college admin,” i wouldn’t out everything now under that category together, but you didn’t leave any option to break it up. ditto “wellness fitness classes” should be under gym, not buried under personnel/benefits.
Faculty
Would like to see a tab related to international issues.
Faculty
I’ve seen many college and university websites and the Williams site is the best by far. I think it’s perfect as it is right now. The only things I would change is that Winter Study courses should not be on the Registrar’s web page but with the rest of the course catalogue. And the calendar for events at the 62 center is so complicated as to make it useless. Other than that, the website is absolutely the best and I wish it could stay just as it is.
Faculty
What if there was a calendar section? Also, I wish there was a place to find a run-down of upcoming campus-wide events, including athletics. (The calendar on teh athletics page is terrible.)
I’d say donors and alumni could be a single category.
I think the ‘especially for’ sections make things confusing–they’re kind of a way around organizing things properly, in my view. I wouldn’t remove them, but I’d have a category called especially for that is just a set of links in a menu (or something).
I don’t have anything against the I am Williams section, but I find the actual quotes, etc., pretty annoying (sorry to be critical). They promote Williams in a way that’s more irritating than convincing–they sort of boast/glorify too much–and that’s to someone who is already convinced that Williams is awesome.
I also think there should be sections called “policies” and “services.” They’d include things like honor code and OIT, respectively. And I’d suggest doing away with the faculty, students, and staff sections.
The items I didn’t categorize either belong in sections that don’t exist (in my opinion) or should be removed.
Staff
I feel that a number of items should be linked under more than one broad category. For example, Academic Calendar should be seen under Academics and under Calendars/Events. Registrar should fall under Students and Alumni. Shouldn’t there be listings for the Health Center and for Human Resources in here somewhere? Thanks!
Faculty
Please make “International” one of the tabs on the Williams home page…
Staff
Please add Human Resources, Dining, Campus Safety and Facilities to Administration section.
Staff
I had trouble finding a place for a few things that seem like they should be for both faculty and staff. Maybe there should be an “employees” tab? I defaulted by putting items in “staff” that could be useful to anyone who works at the college.
Staff
Search Williams, employment information for EVERYONE (students and non-students), & social links can all be in tertiary navigation or tiny links in the footer of the page.
Giving to Williams can be small on the homepage.
Multimedia should be incorporated into the homepage in a strong visual way.
Focus Group, Staff
I’d suggest either different entry points based on user or targeted subnavs for alumni, parents, faculty, staff (and maybe students). I’d also suggest the category of Tools or something similar as a sidebar grouping.
ITC, Faculty
I find the present page is pretty well organized. I like the “espcially for” lists that go to a page with lots of choices.
I wouldn’t put a lot of weight on my sorting here! One would really have to take some time to think about all this. But I wanted to be a sport and give it a try!
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