A Sample of our Work:

We found a bad website, a really bad website, the worst of the worst, the Sanjaya of websites: GVSU Department of Biomedical Sciences,and transformed the site into a professional and accessible final product, seen here .

The Process:

We looked at the Department of Biomedical Sciences webpage. At first glance the problems with the site are obvious. The reader feels immediately overwhelmed by the disorganization of the page. There is no agreement of alignment. The banner, title, body text, and contact information are all aligned differently. Despite the differing alignment choices of the webpage, there is still no clear division between navigation content and body text. As a result, the site is hard to navigate and suffers poor usability.

The user will also notice the site’s layout differs from the neat and generic template of most GVSU department sites in which the banner is common and the navigation menu confirms to a shared style. The reader might also be disappointed to discover that there is no program description or mission statement to be found on the site.

Only adding to the visual sloppiness of the site is the poor picture quality of the site’s main photograph which appears equally out of focus and out of date on the site. Overall the site fails to portray the Department of Biomedical Sciences in a coherent or exciting manner.

The Solution:

In correcting the site’s flaws we started with a screenshot of another GVSU department site.  By saving this as an image and editing it in Fireworks we were able to remove the prior site’s content and replace it with content that was appropriate to the Biomedical Sciences Department. In this manner we were able to create a user friendly site with clearly organized navigation content, a mission statement, and a more attractive photo.

The material added to the site was fairly easy to come by. As noted earlier, the basic template was taken from another GVSU department. The photograph of Padnos Hall was part of the GVSU photo album available from the University’s main webpage. The mission statement was obtained from the University’s catalogue.

The Result:

Overall we feel that we achieved a more professional site which works to promote the credibility of the Biomedical Sciences Department while attracting new students and assisting current students. By better aligning our new site with the conventions of the other CMS managed GVSU department websites, we created a site that users will be more familiar with and therefore have an easy time navigating.