USI website

I think that the USI website gets a lot of negative comments, but overall isn't that bad. The basic navigation of the site is pretty easy to follow. I always have a harder time once I'm in the "my USI" section of the site. I believe that the "my USI" area needs a clearer navigation structure.

On the "academics" page, it has one image to the right side, then blank space for the rest of the scroll down. Although I don't feel that area needs to be busy, some non-disruptive visual elements might be nice, even if it's just a color bar to sandwich in the information.

As a student, I have never looked to be "entertained" by a college site. I am looking for information, such as class listings and descriptions, and degree requirements. I feel that the USI website makes this information pretty easy to find and navigate through. I do wish that they would update when the classes are offered more often. I'm not sure about the other departments, but I have anticipated taking courses that say they are offered in the Spring or the Fall, only to find that during registration, that information is not correct. This makes long term schedule planning impossible and is one of my biggest pet peeves about the site.

Navigation in the "my USI" section gets tricky. We need a clear indication of how to manuever back and forth from that area back into the normal USI area. Also, we do not need two different mail links.

The "athletics" page is very eye catching and dynamic, and I wish that we could have the same eyecatching elements on our "art" page. The page is bland. The page for our gallery draws the eye to the far right, making the viewer skip over the text entirely.

I believe the Seattle University site http://www.seattleu.edu does a very nice job with navigation, and is visually appealing. Their fine arts page works nicely. Even though they use images on the right as well, they don't take over the text. The strong art banner as the top is a strong element drawing the eye in and then done towards the text.

Overall, I believe our site is pretty user friendly compared to a few other univeristy sites that I have looked at. For example, I have jumped through hoops trying to find the class information that I am looking for on the Indiana University site.