CDF Project 1

Ineffective

I believe CMU’s housing portal is an example of ineffective communication design. The site is used to convey housing and dining related information to students. The purpose of such a site should be to effectively help students, especially incoming first-years, setup and manage their dorm and food situation. However, I think it does a bad job in doing so. A lot of space, specifically in the prime real estate that is the center of the page, is wasted on trivial and irrelevant text. The eye-catching red box merely explains how to use the navigation bar, which should be self-explanatory, but is hard to catch at first glance due to its size and color. The biggest links take you away from the portal. Messages from potential roommates are hidden in a drop-down at the top of the screen, and can easily be missed after scrolling down. Considering how confusing starting college can already be, the design of this site is not particularly welcoming and surely causes further confusion.

Effective

In contrast, I think the CMU’s SIO page is a much better designed example of a similar communication task. The SIO is used to interface with the rest of college related information besides housing. The center of the page contains the biggest buttons with helpful icons to the most useful parts of the site as well as actionable alerts specific to the user. There is less important but still useful information relegated to the side. The dark pattern in the background and bright foreground are clearly distinguished. The menus are bold and have arrows indicating further information upon clicking. The goal of this site is to easily access the different information of college life. With clear and simple navigation, the site is able to effectively achieve this goal.