Evaluation Report

NTUSU Online Presence and Services

Prepared by: Foo Jeremy

October 5, 2008

ORNYX T +8590070655 jeremy@ornyx.net http://www.ornyx.net

Executive Summary

Introduction
A decent web presence as well as relevant services are the staple of any organization interested in making their mark in this
day and age. This evaluation of the online presence as well as services of the Nanyang Technological University Students’
Union is by no means a step in streamlining, as well as improvement of a fundamental communication resource of the Union.

Goals
This report is designed to help the Media and IT committee of the Students’ Union make a decision as to the possible
actions to improve the current NTUSU website as well as its online forums and possible other services offerings. The report
will focus on the following areas,

• Analysis of current offerings

• Issue identification
• Recommended solution

Analysis
NTUSU currently hosts 3 distinctly different aspects of their online operations on their web server. This mainly consists of the
main information portal (http://su.ntu.edu.sg) which provides a means to link to the online forums (http://su.ntu.edu.sg/
forum) as well as the online version of the Union’s publication arm at called E-Tribune (http://su.ntu.edu.sg/tribune).

Outlook and Design

Understandably, there is a lack of consistency across all of the Union’s sites.

Screen size
The default portal seems to expect browsers that are currently working with a 1024x768 resolution whilst the forums offers a
more fluid appearance that will flow with the different browser sizes available. Tribune seems to be designed for 1024x768
resolution as well albeit having its maximum content width at barely 800 pixels.

Color palette
In this aspect, the sites maintain a uniform look. Mainly white is used with splashes of baby blue throughout the pages. Few
contrasting colors makes the overall navigation experience between the different sites comfortable.

Information Architecture
The organization of information is essential to make any web site useful in terms of navigation as well as the overall browsing
experience. Logical progression as well as categorization of information has to be performed on anything that requires a
place on the website of any organization prior to the design and creation of the actual site itself.

NTUSU Online Presence and Services Evaluation Report 1

In this aspect, the main portal as well as the e-publication site fails dramatically. Due to the nature of the forums being a
product designed to actually organize information, there is no issue with its information architecture short comings.

Menu Navigation
The main portal of the Union’s online presence is an example of a lack of understanding when it comes to design and
organization of information. The current site offers categories for grouping of information according to the following in the
form of drop down menu items as the main form of navigation,

• About NTUSU
• News & Events
• Events
• Services
• E-Tribune
• Forums

There is a strange discrepancy with regards to the naming of menu items. There are 2 root items that speak of events (News
& Events, Events). While there are non category items (E-Tribune, Forums) that direct the visitor to other sites.

There is also a lack of consistency to how this menu works. For some root menu items, navigation via clicking is disabled
(About, Events, Services) .

Upon inspection of the child items of the root menu item, it is also obvious that the menu items are to vague and would
hamper the visitor should a specific page of the site is the objective of the visit. More descriptive naming sequences should
be used or a visual hint as to the purpose of the page. One example is the item named “Yearbook”. There are multiple
meaning possible attached to such a naming and only upon a visit of the page should one discover that it is actually a page
dedicated to the previous committee.

On this note, careful consideration should also be placed on the information that should exist on the site. Irrelevant
information should either be omitted entirely to prevent clutter or better organised or displayed.

Main Page
Virtually all traffic to any site would land on the main page of the domain. As such, the main page of the Union succeeds at
only half of its correct purpose, which would be the highlight of important information throughout the site to direct visitors to
those pages.

As such, having the highlights and main announcements on the page only has visitors stay on the main page ONLY for a few
seconds before moving on to another site. There is a lack of direction and motivation for them to visit other pages of the
Union site.

Information presented on such a page should also understand that the top few hundred pixels of the page are crucial to the
visitor either staying on the page or moving off due to the face the viewport of any browser only sees that portion. A good
example of usage of such a principle is via Apple’s main page (www.apple.com).

The animated logo is also a distracting element on the page and would cause attention to be diverted away form the more
important information on the page.

NTUSU Online Presence and Services Evaluation Report 2

Page Organisation
The Union site actually has lots of information that is hidden by poor considerations when it came to the organization and
design. There is a huge need for proper information architecture in order to correct the mistakes and improve the usefulness
of the site.

Issues that are ongoing should be given their own section instead of being grouped with News & Events. There should also
be consolidation of the different sites of the services that NTUSU provides as most have their own look and mainly just use
the main portal as a link to their mini site.

Validation
The NTUSU site fails both of W3C’s HTML 1 and CSS2 validation. WIth the advent of modern browsers that respect web
standards, it is highly imperative that the site also follows such standards to ensure a uniform look across all browsers on all
platforms. In addition, respecting these web standards also allow for more efficient usage of bandwidth in transmitting the
site across internet endpoints.

There is also a need to validate the site against Web Accessibility Standards 3 as the site should remain friendly to the
different demographic of visitors.

Traffic
There are multiple ways to generate traffic for any site. A major contribution as previously identified with the navigation
shortcomings is good effective site structure, organisation with a intuitive navigation system in place. If information that is
sought is difficult to get to, visitors would usually either not be interested in such information or would not even know about it
entirely. Consequently, the less useful information on a site, the less traffic would be generate due to the lack of usefulness of
the site.

Interactivity is another traffic generator. Analysis of the NTUSU site reveals that it has a one way orientated management of
information with data being pushed to the visitors without much a way of getting feedback except at the forums, which has a
barrier of entry in the form of registration.

In addition, there has to be mechanisms outside of the realm of online content as a means of promoting the use of the site.
There has to be a close relationship between the site and the working groups of the Union to ensure that the site is relevant
and useful.

Marketing
Apart from just being a website, the NTUSU site is nothing more than that. There is an obvious lack of effort when it comes
to the utilization of the site. In its current state, it is nothing more than an announcement portal and nothing else.

There has to be promotion of the site as a useful resource for students and constituent bodies under the Union. Without this
symbiotic relationship between marketing and actual useful services, either one would be useless in helping the site achieve
its full potential.

1 http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsu.ntu.edu.sg%2F

2 http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css21&warning=0&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsu.ntu.edu.sg%2F

3 http://www.cynthiasays.com/mynewtester/cynthia.exe?rptmode=2&url1=http%3A%2F%2Fsu.ntu.edu.sg%2F
NTUSU Online Presence and Services Evaluation Report 3
Issue Identification
With the analysis of the site as well as its online offerings these are the present issues identified,

• Poor navigation design

• Potential to expand on the main page usability
• Imperative need for Information Architecture
• Consistency across all mini sites and services
• Standards compliancy
• Browser viewport optimization (fluid/fixed layouts)

In addition to the superficial issues of the site, there are other identifiable problems that are inherent due to the design and
organisation of the current site.

• Lack of interactivity
• No guaranteed returning visitor features
• Lack of exploitation of the potential that is the main online communications resource of any organisation
• Need for closer working relations with PR and publications working groups of the Union
• Implementation of a design philosophy and standards
• Adherence to well thought out design goals and concepts

Recommended Solution

Revamp
There is a huge need to rebuild the information system of the Union with something that is of industrial standard. Good
design, intuitive information architecture long also needs a good paring with a management system that is capable of
achieving the design goals and purposes of the Union site.

WordPress is a content management system that is highly extensible and can be repurposed with plugins to extend its
features. It has wide support and is used by many of her industry partners, publishing houses and online media.

Integration of Services
In order to maintain consistency and generation of relevant and quality content, there has to be greater involvement of the
different services that the Union provides. The Public Relations department of the Union should be involved as the site is a
good communication resource that can be used to further the agenda of the Union.

Generation of quality content can also come from the publication department of the Union as part of the E-Tribune set of
services or a new separate reporting arm to make the Union site a vibrant and interesting place for visitors.

Additionally, the different working groups should also integrate their sites into the main site in order to achieve consistency
and easy of access of information for visitors.

Provision of useful services to Students

Issues are a major source of feedback and would generate the most interest amongst students. The current issues system
or lack thereof can be further enhanced to provide a singular access point for both people with complaints as well as the
people who most likely will be able to do something about it.

NTUSU Online Presence and Services Evaluation Report 4

The model that GetSatisfaction (www.getsatisfaction.org) uses or that of a support ticketing system that open source
projects use are a good one to follow as they are the most used and as a result most refined for this purpose.

Provision of useful services to Sub Committees under NTUSU

Initial generation of traffic would have to come from the sub committees under the Union as they are the ones who have the
most interaction with the main working body of the Union.

As such, useful services should be provided for these working sub committees. Be it portal for the hosting of information
about their events or even a repository for project management, these would give sub committees a feel that the Union
cares about what they are doing and bring everyone closer to the fact that the Union cares.

Only when the people working for the Union feel that way then would the students that participate in the activities organized
by them.

Provision of useful services to constituent bodies/clubs

A subsequent phase to the services infrastructure would be to extend what is present for the sub committees to the
constituent bodies/JCRCs and clubs in NTU.

This would provide a basis for content generation and as a result, traffic generation.

Social Networking
Everyone has a social networking account these days. Why not the Union? This can be further expanded to build an
effective NTU alumni network that is unique to NTU and would function better that as a system for NTUSU to contact
students about events.

Blogging for students

In the spirit of community generation of content, NTUSU could look into the creation of a blogging service for her students.
This provides an avenue for Tribune to gather interesting articles through the use of user generated content similar to how
Straits Times is using STOMP.

WordPress currently provides a variant that does multiple blogs on a single installation that is used for the WordPress.com
domain. This hosting service should be placed on an alternate domain to differentiate it as a service. Possible integration
with the social networking system would add value to it.

This also provides a way for the Union to be aware of issues that students have and would help in the management of such
issues.

Use of Web 2.0 Services

Be modern, keep up with what everyone is doing online. Integration of Web 2.0 services would help the Union not alienate
itself from the students.

SIngular platform for content discussion

With issues tracking and blogging, there might be not a need anymore for online forums. The forums can either be
repurposed or done away with entirely. It might help to integrated the forum's capabilities into the recommended solution or
even building similar functionality.

Further evaluation is needed before a decision can be made.

NTUSU Online Presence and Services Evaluation Report 5
Conclusion
These identification and solutions are just but the tip of the iceberg in the improvement on the information system of the
Union. Much has to be done on the part of the Media and IT committee to ensure that the work done to provide such
services to the Union, the working committees and the students.

It is only through ongoing innovation and improvement that the usefulness and full potential of having an online presence and
services can be realised. And even so, these innovations should not stop otherwise there would not really be a point for
these changes and improvements.

NTUSU Online Presence and Services Evaluation Report 6