Overall- looks great! Like the color themed main pages. The improved contrast works well. The multimedia tour link is much improved. The screen now works on 1024 wide displays, although the scroll bar still exists. I can live with it. The community bubble just fits.
1. Staying Safe page-
I believe we requested to have the "Safety Best Practices" appear above "See the Sites".
There is no Community bubble on this page; I presume this is by design, since "Campus Emergency Numbers" appears in nearly the same location.
2. Who is Eligible? page- we might be able to get "#2. Enroll " appear above the break on 1024x768 monitors if we list the different non-qualifying employee categories in two columns vs. one.
3. "See the Sites:" sections. There is no background contrast appearing on my monitor at all. There are, however, some faint, light blue rectangle outlines surrounding the title "See the Sites" and also around the "See the Sites" text body.
4. Contrast of Highlighted items- the contrast displayed when the cursor rolls over a main menu choice or Community bubble choice is great. However, for the selected choice in the Community bubble, the contrast level is still on the low side. How about if the text color of the selected choice reflect the default color of the current main menu (e.g., purple for your benefits, orange for your checklists, etc.)
5. Your MIT page- Community Bubble "Next Fun" rollover color is orange (and the lighter color orange at that). Should this be green? Similar for the Your Benefits page; the rollover color should be purple.
6. Your Checklists page- Community Buggle "Next Jargon" rollover color is light orange (instead of dark orange).
Top HR banner: If possible, say "Search this Site" rather than just Search. It's part of the HR banner so to me right now it looks like it will search the entire HR site, and that's not the case. I think we should be more specific.
MIT branding looks great.
Community bubble: Under the bubble I prefer "More" to "Next" -- it's still vague but I think More is preferable since we're talking about a random arrangement and something that people are supposed to browse, vs. proceeding through in sequential order. Plus "Next Fun" sounds silly. So it would read: "See all | More news" (And check the case -- right now "all" is lowercase but "News" is uppercase)
2nd and 3rd levels: The active top category is easier to see now, but I wonder if the colors should be reversed -- on the Your MIT page, for example, Your MIT is white and visible and the other two buttons almost appear grayed out. To me, the button that should look the "grayest" is the page you're on, and the ones that should look the most appealing/clickable are the pages you're not on. But I could be in left field on that -- I'd want to see what others thought.
Do the nav items look a little small/close together to anyone else? (I'm talking about the bulleted lists of 3rd level links -- Getting Around, Diversity, etc.) We can't go too big because some items are wordy (want to avoid line breaks if possible) but I find the list of links a little hard to read the way it is now.
Contact HR: I still worry that this is more prominent than we want it to be.
Print This Page placement seems random to me. It may be too late for this now but I think we should have had a footer with: "contact hr | print this page | copyright massachusetts institute of technology 2008" or something along those lines, so placement of those items would be both consistent and yet not prominent. No need to rethink it now, just a thought for future consideration.
The site looks great. I agree with Laurie...strongly encourage the use of the word More vs. Next. I like the idea of a footer but certainly understand if we can't do that at this point. But I do think the contact HR needs to be as visible as it is (in terms of reflecting our customer service accessibility). The site is so good I don't think anyone will need tocontact us anyway! Is Print this Page only on certain pages?
I don't have very much to add since the site looks really good. My main question is about the lower level pages and how users will navigate back to the homepage. I couldn't figure out how one would get back to the homepage (if they wanted to for some reason and didn't want to use the back button). Forgive me if this has already been discussed and I'm just out of the loop.
- I think that the word "Welcome" on the homepage (under the main content area) should be another color (not blue) unless the word is going to be a link. The same goes for the words "See the Sites" on the 2nd and 3rd level pages.
- I'm not sure if the page header, for example, "Staying Safe" (http://www.inkd.net/dl/mit/neo/r03/neo_r03B_01.6.html), should be placed in the same area as the name of the page area "Your MIT" - besides looking a little cluttered, especially if the header is long, I think it may be hard to add text in this area later since the header area will most likely be a graphic.
I think the site looks great! The color contrasts are great. I also like the new text under the Cummunity Bubble --it works for me!
I have a couple of minor things to point out:
On the third level page under "Your Checklists - Before You Start" The text in the first paragraph should read, "Here are five things you can do..." because there are five items in the list.
On the third level page under "Your Benefits - Who Is Eligible?" Is there another way to indicate #1 and #2? Perhaps "Step 1 and Step 2" or "First.... and Then..."
5 Comments
Kenneth Paul
Overall- looks great! Like the color themed main pages. The improved contrast works well. The multimedia tour link is much improved. The screen now works on 1024 wide displays, although the scroll bar still exists. I can live with it. The community bubble just fits.
1. Staying Safe page-
2. Who is Eligible? page- we might be able to get "#2. Enroll " appear above the break on 1024x768 monitors if we list the different non-qualifying employee categories in two columns vs. one.
3. "See the Sites:" sections. There is no background contrast appearing on my monitor at all. There are, however, some faint, light blue rectangle outlines surrounding the title "See the Sites" and also around the "See the Sites" text body.
4. Contrast of Highlighted items- the contrast displayed when the cursor rolls over a main menu choice or Community bubble choice is great. However, for the selected choice in the Community bubble, the contrast level is still on the low side. How about if the text color of the selected choice reflect the default color of the current main menu (e.g., purple for your benefits, orange for your checklists, etc.)
5. Your MIT page- Community Bubble "Next Fun" rollover color is orange (and the lighter color orange at that). Should this be green? Similar for the Your Benefits page; the rollover color should be purple.
6. Your Checklists page- Community Buggle "Next Jargon" rollover color is light orange (instead of dark orange).
Laurie C Bryce
Site looks great! My comments:
Top HR banner: If possible, say "Search this Site" rather than just Search. It's part of the HR banner so to me right now it looks like it will search the entire HR site, and that's not the case. I think we should be more specific.
MIT branding looks great.
Community bubble: Under the bubble I prefer "More" to "Next" -- it's still vague but I think More is preferable since we're talking about a random arrangement and something that people are supposed to browse, vs. proceeding through in sequential order. Plus "Next Fun" sounds silly. So it would read: "See all | More news" (And check the case -- right now "all" is lowercase but "News" is uppercase)
2nd and 3rd levels: The active top category is easier to see now, but I wonder if the colors should be reversed -- on the Your MIT page, for example, Your MIT is white and visible and the other two buttons almost appear grayed out. To me, the button that should look the "grayest" is the page you're on, and the ones that should look the most appealing/clickable are the pages you're not on. But I could be in left field on that -- I'd want to see what others thought.
Do the nav items look a little small/close together to anyone else? (I'm talking about the bulleted lists of 3rd level links -- Getting Around, Diversity, etc.) We can't go too big because some items are wordy (want to avoid line breaks if possible) but I find the list of links a little hard to read the way it is now.
Contact HR: I still worry that this is more prominent than we want it to be.
Print This Page placement seems random to me. It may be too late for this now but I think we should have had a footer with: "contact hr | print this page | copyright massachusetts institute of technology 2008" or something along those lines, so placement of those items would be both consistent and yet not prominent. No need to rethink it now, just a thought for future consideration.
-- Laurie
Janet Walzer
The site looks great. I agree with Laurie...strongly encourage the use of the word More vs. Next. I like the idea of a footer but certainly understand if we can't do that at this point. But I do think the contact HR needs to be as visible as it is (in terms of reflecting our customer service accessibility). The site is so good I don't think anyone will need tocontact us anyway! Is Print this Page only on certain pages?
Jackie Cancell
I don't have very much to add since the site looks really good. My main question is about the lower level pages and how users will navigate back to the homepage. I couldn't figure out how one would get back to the homepage (if they wanted to for some reason and didn't want to use the back button). Forgive me if this has already been discussed and I'm just out of the loop.
- I think that the word "Welcome" on the homepage (under the main content area) should be another color (not blue) unless the word is going to be a link. The same goes for the words "See the Sites" on the 2nd and 3rd level pages.
- I'm not sure if the page header, for example, "Staying Safe" (http://www.inkd.net/dl/mit/neo/r03/neo_r03B_01.6.html), should be placed in the same area as the name of the page area "Your MIT" - besides looking a little cluttered, especially if the header is long, I think it may be hard to add text in this area later since the header area will most likely be a graphic.
Julienne M Dean
I think the site looks great! The color contrasts are great. I also like the new text under the Cummunity Bubble --it works for me!
I have a couple of minor things to point out:
On the third level page under "Your Checklists - Before You Start" The text in the first paragraph should read, "Here are five things you can do..." because there are five items in the list.
On the third level page under "Your Benefits - Who Is Eligible?" Is there another way to indicate #1 and #2? Perhaps "Step 1 and Step 2" or "First.... and Then..."