Website Critique: SAIC portal

Introduction to the Portal

It is a school-based portal. Like most school portals, it addresses multiple audiences with their site. It serves students, faculty, and administrative staff. In my opinion, three key things that make any web site a great website is its purpose, content, and aesthetically pleasing design with smooth navigation. Let’s see how the portal lines up with these elements.

Breaking-it-down…

First Welcome Page:

This is the first page we all see as we enter the site. It sets the tone for the site. The SAIC portal is very bland, aside from the bar of blue sky with clouds, it looks like a primitive site put together by a group of amateurs.

This page only needs the Access Login area and help button if you have problems logging in. It also needs a tag back to SAIC main page. Everything else can be deleted because they are just words for show with no purpose. I believe less is more, especially when it comes to designing an aesthetically pleasing website.

Luminis Platform:

Once you are logged in, you are in Luminis Platform. This page is full of TMI, TMI, TMI, too much information—very intimidating. It’s layout is practically boring and when I navigate through the website I feel like I’m in a maze. I am always afraid to look around as I feel burdened with all my options/information and I make a quick escape route and try to focus on my e-mail inbox.

I do like Featured SAIC Art channel but it seems like it could be used as a better focal point toward the top bar or one of top corners. I just noticed Personal Announcements channel right now! Wow. Oh, and a Weather channel too! I never go into Portal to see Chicago weather update!!!

The search box on top has a very slow upload and is non-functional on my Portal.

There are too many tabs on top. It has always confused me. There are times I have had trouble finding things on the site. I do like how the tab colors change to red when you click on it.

Events Calendar tab and Academic Calendar Channel in Luminis Platform can merge and could create a Calendar tab with options.

What’s Happening Channel could just have today’s events and there is no need for tomorrow’s events with an Event Calendar tab on top.

I feel I get enough e-mail about campus announcements, so there is no need to put a Campus Announcement Channel next to my e-mail inbox.

Apply for an Exhibition channel is cool but that could be moved Public Programs tab although “Public Programs” could be named differently.

Finding my way in Chicago channel is practical but that could also be tucked away under Services tab.

Contact info channel is a community directory for employees and is mislabeled as SAIC contact info. I would assume with that kind of channel, we would be able to search everyone who has access to portal including students. Contact Info channel should move under tools tab.

Bookmarks channel—just saw it today for the first time and I don’t see it being useful, personally.

F news channel needs to go. I rarely scroll all the way to the bottom of the Portal to see what’s happening on F news. I like that there’s a link for it in “Public Programs” tab, again, Public Programs tab is too general and I wouldn’t guess to find F news, exhibitions at SAIC, and Public and Special Programs under one umbrella.

Under tools tab, I do not understand why I need to re-login my username and password to access information from Oracle. It should derive automatically from SAIC portal without a halt.

Using E-mail

My main use of the portal is for checking campus e-mail and also for checking course tabs.

One of the biggest weakness about the Portal e-mail system is that it doesn’t save my “sent” messages unless I specifically requests it and it has deleted all of the saved sent messaged at some point without prior warning.

It should have a search box that could search everyone’s saic e-mail address.


My Course tab

This is probably the best tab in the whole site. It’s functional, practical, and is clearly organized.

Conclusion
In my opinion, three elements of a good website, purpose, content, and simple layout with great navigation are in different frequency at the Portal. It seems like a very primitive approach is taken to design SAIC portal with very minimal visual enhancers. The portal puts too much emphasis on the static content and therefore the issue of design and navigation is primarily neglected. They need to simplify the sections and create subsections with organized links by content to provide easy navigation among the site. It has an abundance of great content; it’s just a matter of sorting it out to the appropriate venues while making it aesthetically pleasing. I definitely recommend more visual stimulants!!!