The Thing That Made My Eyeballs Bleed Today

Go to the Pratt SILS site. Click on Mission. Prepare yourself for typos, rampant run-on sentences, a broken link and a cacophonous layout.

Seriously, take away all of the design issues for a minute. Please, for the love of God, proofread! It would be unacceptable to hand-in a paper that looked like this. Why is it acceptable for the public face of Pratt SILS to be riddled with typos and incomprehensible sentences?

A Response

We read with great interest Norman Oder’s post on the LJ Insider blog about Pratt SILS Site Sucks. Since SSS was not contacted for a comment, we would like to take this opportunity to respond to a few key points.

First, Pratt SILS’s website is not a “temporary” site as Dean Giannini contends. It has been online since approximately 2005 in a similar iteration and can in no way be described as temporary or transitional.

Secondly, we do not criticize the site because it’s not “pretty”. We criticize it because it is hard to use. If, as Dean Giannini says, providing “content is the most important” purpose of the site, poor information design directly impacts its effectiveness for this very purpose. This is not about wanting the Pratt SILS site to be graphically pleasing (although there is nothing wrong with that and, indeed, that does make a site more pleasant to use, which increases user satisfaction). The site is rich in content, but is a hodgepodge of poorly organized information. Websites are not intended to be brochures, as Dean Giannini contends. Rather, they should be information portals that focus on key audiences and provide that information in an effective and useful manner. In addition, sites should reflect well on the institution they represent. It is incumbent upon those who design and implement sites to make them as useful as possible.

Finally, we would like to raise a key point about the anonymity of the blog. Direct talks with Dean Giannini about the SILS site have been attempted several times, and she has always been both defensive of the site and dismissive of any offers to work with her to improve it. Many students have volunteered their time and expertise to make the site a highly useful informational tool for the school, and nothing has come of it. SSS hopes Mr. Oder will continue to follow both SSS and the Pratt SILS site. We truly hope to report, along with him, on the new, attractive, and, most importantly, usable SILS site in June. We look forward to the promised redesign, just as we looked forward to past promises. If SSS doesn’t hold its breath, don’t hold it against us.

The Thing That Made My Eyeballs Bleed Today

Once a day, we will try to post a real-world example of what makes the SILS site suck so badly.

Today, it’s this little gem on the front page:

“LOCATED AT 144 W. 14TH St. -
MANHATTAN IS OUR CAMPUS”

This poorly written sentence makes a user expend just that little extra bit of mental energy figuring out what exactly is meant. Obviously, the entire island of Manhattan is not located at 144 W. 14th Street, but it’ll take you a second to untangle the real intent out of that sentence.

Now this isn’t that horrible, all things considered. But it’s an embarrassingly easy example of the total lack of thought put into the creation of the best marketing and informational tool Pratt has at its disposal.