We just launched a complete refresh of the Office of the Registrar Web site. Above is the visual comparison of the old (left) to the new (right). The refresh brings the site into a modern look with university branding, simplified navigation and page structure.

Redesign Goals

The old site homepage was in desperate need of direction. Over the years the homepage ended up becoming a dumping ground for links and news.  Our first goal was to clean up the information architecture and provide a clear direction for users from the homepage.

The green, teal and maroon reflects the Wayne State colors and the header is now consistent with the rest of the new sites at the university.

Main image panel has two functions

1. Show some idea of what the registrar deals with and how it has evolved from old paper trail to online.
2. Call out important pages that students often look for.

The site is all around easy on the eyes, keeping the color scheme simple and with a generous use of white space. The site is easy to navigate with the main menu staying on top and the secondary links on the left with an on-state indication to show which page the user is on.

Overall

Students will be able to get to the information they need quicker than before. The navigation being by “user role” takes the guess work out of the navigation. And last but not least the code on the site is completely standard, has screen, mobile and print stylesheets and uses microformats.

We also redesigned the calendars on the site allowing a user to see the important dates in a nice overview format. Before the calendar tried to compact all three semesters into one table and it was very difficult to read. The calendars that are up right now are just the first transistion and we hope to simplify it even more in the coming weeks.

Check out the site at: http://reg.wayne.edu/

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under launch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.