UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy Web Site Designs

Current Web Site

Current sitehome page

The content that changes is the News and the Events in the center of the page, but the design draws attention away from it.The biggest visual element on the page, the image in the top banner, has nothing to do with our most valuable assets on this page (the news about our research and faculty). It also doesn't change, giving the impression that our home page is static.

Current sitefaculty profile page

The quality of the content on faculty profile pages vary wildly from one faculty member to the next, depending on how frequently they update their information. Also, all the information has to be manually entered, creating extra work for the faculty (if your office address changes, you have to update it in your UNC directory and on pharmacy.unc.edu.

New UNC.edu design(launching this summer)

New UNC.eduhome page

The design allows the University better tell our story. The main image is tied to relevant story and can be changed as needed. News and events are prominent as are social media tools.Visitors are allowed to contribute their own items to the photo stream at the bottom of the page (submissions are screened)

The new UNC design will be a federated design, meaning it aims to implement a consistent look across the sites of all campus units. Adoption of the design and accompanying content management system are not required. ITS will provide support.

New Office of Research and Economic Development site following the federated design (now live) http://research.unc.edu

New Art Department page following the federated design (now live) http://art.unc.edu/index.htm

New MyUNC page following the federated design

Departments on campus are encouraged, but not required, to incorporate the new design into their sites. Also, each department can pick and choose which elements of the new design it wants to implement. Because the time lines, capabilities, and support availability of the University CMS are largely undefined, we have decided to continue developing the School site independently while adopting some of the elements of the UNC design.

Taking into account our needs and incorporating elements from the UNC federated design, we developed an in-house design for pharmacy.unc.edu as a starting point.

Our designhome page

Rotating headlines at the top to better highlight our top stories (usually research- and faculty-related).The dominant visual on the page is now tied to the content and thus changes frequently.Provides quick links to some of the most frequently viewed information for each academic program, making it easier for visitors.Dynamic dropdown menus in the top navigation bar to improve navigation.

Our designfaculty profile page

Our aim is to automatically pull information from as many databases as possible to populate the faculty profile page, making it look good even with relatively little effort by the faculty member. To start, we'll tap the PubMed database to populate the Publications section. We are also looking into other databases such as Ramses for grants.

We shared our designs with the Rivers Agency, whom we have been working with since last year to update of the backend system driving our site. We asked them to use our mockups and UNC's new design as starting points and add their own touch. They have created two different designs.

Rivers Agencydesign ver. 1home page

Rivers Agencydesign ver. 1faculty profile page

Rivers Agencydesign ver.2home page

Rivers Agencydesign ver.2faculty profile page

Your Feedback

1. Evaluate the design overall. Do you like it? Do you think it is an improvement? Does it compare well with our peers at UNC and with pharmacy schools at other universities?

2. Make any specific observations about the designs and layout. Think about the use of color, the arrangement, the density of links and information, and the prominence of different elements. 3. I'll aggregate and filter the observations and suggestions and share them with Rivers and to all of you who have contributed.