lawbore – city hub
TRANSCRIPT
Onur Dora & Shahzeb Sarwar
A presentation will give on ‘City Hub’. There will be an explanation of what ‘City Hub’ does.
Others areas which will be covered are; accessibility; navigation; appearance; usefulness.
Improvements will also be suggested for the Lawbore City Hub webpage.
Accessibility of a website is vital in order for online users to be able to use a website for any information they may need to access. Having difficult access to a webpage will discourage many users from using the website as they will be frustrated thus giving the website a bad reputation.
The City Hub webpage is easily accessible for users through the Lawbore website as there is a direct link available at the top of the page. It is also easily identifiable which allows users to recognize it immediately after entry into the Lawbore webpage.
This is important in order to allow students and staff to be able to use the website without having too much difficulty.
http://lawbore.net/
Direct link for City Hub is available from the homepage of Lawbore.
Navigation is about being able to reach the information that is needed. The navigation of a website should be easy to use and not be poorly designed. Having a complicated navigation design may discourage people from using the website.
It is important that students and other users are able to use the navigation within the City Hub page. Not being able to access the necessary information could lead to inconveniences. Not being able to reach information means that the website is not fulfilling its purpose making it useless and so, users may start using different websites other than City Hub.
Having to avoid too many pages in the navigation process is important as users would not desire going through numerous pages to access the necessary information. It is important to avoid this and City Hub has done this well as there are different sections available on the homepage of City Hub.
There are subheadings for each particular section allowing users to easily identify the section in which they need to access. Each subheading has links provided under them in order for users to reach the information that they want. This will have allowed users to easily access the information they need and not the information that is unnecessary to them.
http://city.lawbore.net/
Subheadings for each sectionLinks for information
• The Lawbore city hub site has been constructed well, formated and organised professionally. The information is equally levelled out for each and every heading/topic and the image placements are all equal and suited to the different sections as well.
• There is hardly any use of white space however there are white headings which indicates the importance of these topics and makes the headings look more bold so attracts the readers' attention.
The Law Library New Books section looks very
eye catching and interactive and makes the
reader want to ‘have a go’ at using it. There is a
good use of colours like the turquoise and grey
which work well together as well as the other
colours from the new books section and images
which make the page stand out.
The font used is very easy to read and simple
which is good for students so that they can
access the sections they would like to visit
without difficulty.
The City Hub is highly valuable since it is the main updated
page of the City University law school lawbore and has all
the up to date latest materials/research and information
needed for Law students. The city hub is useful for students
who would like new books for their studies. The site also is
useful if you would like to know of any new or featured
updates of the legal system which helps us keep up to date
with regular changes.
The events calendar is useful for students looking forward to
attending law events - debates, competitions and social
events which I think is needed on the City Hub to make
students aware of extra-curricular activities they can
participate in to broaden their knowledge and skills.
There is also a adds section where students post advertisements
relevant to the needs of other students for example selling there
previous books. This is useful because students get to buy
recommended books from students who have already completed
there studies and can even catch a very good bargain at the same
time!
Talking about useful there is also a part named ‘Useful
Links’, which is handy for students who want to explore or be
directed to more relevant websites like library bookings, email
access.
One of the most useful things on the City Hub website exclusive
for city law students only is the databases like Lexis library and
Hein online, these are extremely useful if pupils would like to
explore cases, journals, reports and legislation to gain research
into law.
Emily’s twitter feed has recent updates on changes to the
City Law School and social updates which is placed at the
top of the page to make students aware of changes and
important news. Students can also ask questions directly to
Emily if they need to, which is excellent if your looking for
advice or guidance along with your studies.
The fact that the page can be accessed
from wherever you are is also very useful
as students can use it to support there
studies wherever they are.
One improvement that needs to take place on the city hub page
is that it needs to be more interactive to make people/students
want to get to know more and not just scroll past, for example
the featured links, databases are very interesting and useful for
law students but the way it is presented looks like a list full of
normal categorised topics. It needs to be more appealing to
students and made to stand out by the use of a new style board
with different coloured headings to show whether the links are
new or old etc. Also the adds section seems more informal and
so it may need to stand out more so students are aware of the
adds as not all adds last for a long time, they normally just stay
for a limited time period so something like the new library books
section would work well.
Another aspect that may need to be altered on the
city hub page is the use of colours, the colour
combination is very good however it doesn't seem
that suited towards students, it looks more suited
towards a older target audience and makes the page
look a little darkened and dull. One recommendation
would be to modify the colours to something that is
suited to all ages and groups of people, for example
red and white.
There is too much information on one page. This is not a good thing as students will not be interested in too much unnecessary information.
Having too much information on a webpage will make it complicated and can discourage students from visiting the webpage again.
The City Hub webpage needs to be simpler. Information provided on the City Hub homepage needs cutting down on in order for students to be able to navigate through the webpage without having to read through unnecessary information.
The City Hub webpage lacks clarity. It is not clear enough as to which section should be accessed by the individual user.
For example, it is not easy to identify as to which posts/sections apply to which groups of students i.e. 1st year, 2nd year or 3rd year.
There should be separate webpages for each year group within the City Hub website so that students can access the webpage that applies to them instead of having to go through excessive information which may only apply to other year groups.
Overall after looking at all different perspectives of the
Lawbore City Hub webpage, we can now come to a
conclusion to say that it is a amazing way of keeping in
touch with the City Law Schools regular news and
updates whether its to look out for new materials or feed
needed to support the law students studies wherever they
may be. However we did see some room for improvement
which we have discussed in detail in the presentation.
After making suitable recommendations and
improvements of the Lawbore City Hub we hope that
these recommendations are implemented on the page.