University Business - February 2012 - (Page 50)

internet technology Roots and GRowth of Rwd RWD was first introduced in a May 2010 article by Ethan Marcotte, published in A List Apart, a well-respected online magazine “for people who make websites.” This new approach aimed to offer the key to designing websites once for all screen resolutions, web browsers, and devices. Marcotte made the case for responsive websites by extending the concept of responsive architecture to the digital world. “We can design for an optimal viewing experience, but embed standards-based technologies into our designs to make them not only more flexible, but more adaptive to the media that renders them,” he wrote. Then, he explained with a real example how flexible CSS layouts, media queries, and JavaScript code could all be used to create a website that could automatically adapt to the display constraints of most devices. Marcotte has since written a book on this approach: Responsive Web Design (A Book Apart, 2011), and worked on the high-profile responsive redesign of the Boston Globe website. Given a high degree of overlap between the goals of your website visitors across different devices, he believes serving a single, responsive design makes sense for institutions. “There are some fantastic responsive higher ed sites out there—the University of notre dame (Ind.) and Lancaster University (UK) spring to mind—so I’d imagine this could work well for many universities,” he says of RWD as the proverbial silver bullet for college websites. Most early adopters in higher education concur. Over the past nine months or so, the RWD approach has been slowly—yet steadily—gaining supporters among university web designers. the appRoach in action Launched in May 2011 after a year-long redesign project by the design agency Happy Cog (owned by Jeffrey Zeldman, publisher of A List Apart), the new website for arizona state University’s ASU Online was one of the first institutional responsive websites in higher ed. Beyond 50 | February 2012 great feedback and online media exposure, the redesigned site has had very positive, and measurable, results. “We’re seeing higher overall conversions post redesign with significant improvements for visitors using mobile devices,” says John Devoy, information architect at ASU Online. Notre Dame’s new home page, launched in July 2011, has been the most ‘Responsive web design means designing the best site for your users based on what you know about them.’ —Stewart Foss, EduStyle Awards founder talked about RWD implementation within the higher ed web community so far. “We’ve been providing mobile styles with our sites for several years now,” recalls Erik Runyon, Manager of Interactive De- Resources ASU Online, http://asuonline.asu.edu/ Bryn Mawr, http://brynmawr.edu Higher Ed Responsive Website Gallery, http://bit.ly/higheredrwd Interviews with early adopters in higher education: http://collegewebeditor.com/rwd Lancaster University, http://www.lancs.ac.uk The Mobile Movement Study, http://www.thinkwithgoogle. com/insights/library/studies/themobile-movement Pew Research Center Survey, http://pewinternet.org/ Reports/2011/Cell-Phones.aspx Responsive Web Design, ALA, http://www.alistapart.com/articles/ responsive-web-design University of Notre Dame, http://nd.edu/ University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, http://uwgb.edu velopment at AgencyND, the university’s internal agency. As a result, RWD looked like the next logical step for the team to improve the browsing experience of mobile and other web users. The University of wisconsin, Green Bay rolled out a new responsive web design recently as part of the institutional website migration to a content management system. The web template developed for the CMS rollout was modified late in the design process. “We added on responsive techniques to the already existing template so it would effectively scale down to smaller devices,” explains Andrew Buckman, web developer at UWGB. “The decision to adopt a mobile strategy based on responsive design techniques was motivated by our research into other higher ed mobile strategies—most of which are separately maintained sites,” recalls Catherine Farman, web designer at Bryn Mawr college (Pa.). For this smaller institution with limited technical resources, the RWD approach seemed more practical: designing and maintaining a single set of code to serve all connected devices. This conversion project took five months from research to launch and covered almost 5,000 different template pages. More and more institutions, including Vassar college (N.Y.) and west Virginia University, have also embraced the RWD approach for existing websites or new web projects. “We have hit a point where screens sizes are moving in every direction, both bigger and smaller,” says eduStyle Awards founder Stewart Foss, who teaches a four-week online course on responsive design for higher ed. With several RWD conversion projects under his belt, he is a strong proponent of the strategy. “Responsive web design means designing the best site for your users based on what you know about them,” he says. For Foss, there’s no doubt that professional web designers need to rethink how they design institutional websites to make them work on every browser, on every device, and at every size. And, 2012 might well be the year of RWD in higher ed. universitybusiness.com http://asuonline.asu.edu/ http://www.brynmawr.edu http://www.bit.ly/higheredrwd http://www.collegewebeditor.com/rwd http://www.lancs.ac.uk http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/library/studies/themobile-movement http://www.pewinternet.org/ http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design http://www.nd.edu/ http://www.uwgb.edu http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - February 2012

University Business - February 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Financial Aid
Campus CFO
Education Gateways
5 Things Administrators Must Know About E-commerce Now
There’s an App for That
Internet Technology
End Note

University Business - February 2012