The Thing That Made My Eyeballs Bleed Today

The latest addition to the html atrocity known as the Pratt SILS site:

OUR CAMPUS - Harnessing digital technology, we teach students to design a more usable and understandable world connecting people, information, ideas and meaning. The Master of Science in Library & Information Science prepares students as professionals in this exciting and challenging field.

Wah? I need an “embarassed” emoticon to fully illustrate how much I cringed when I saw this. Will anyone who looks at the site find this little blurb remotely credulous? I’d love to see a little digital technology harnessed to create a more usable and understandable website for Pratt SILS.

As a side note, it is interesting to SSS how people seem to feel personally about Dean Giannini. While that is not the purpose of SSS, we do believe the Pratt Institute Board of Directors and President Schutte may well want to take note of the students’ level of frustration and the Dean’s complete lack of interest, real or perceived, in listening and acting on student feedback. Great academic leaders put student and institutional needs before their own aspirations.

The Thing That Made My Eyeballs Bleed Today

Huh?

Information sheds light on knowing and doing –

iDEA school
information Design, Education & Art

Do any Pratt SILS students know what this “iDEA school” thing is exactly? Have any of us heard of it? Anyone involved with this? Can anyone “shed some light” on this “iDEA” thing? Any idea? Any at all? Is this supposed to be a mission statement for Pratt SILS or some random program in which no one is actually involved? It’s perplexing.

Good thing we have this graphic to clarify and excite.

It’s hard to understand why Pratt SILS would choose to promote a program (if that’s what this is) on Information Design and Art in this unattractive fashion. The tagline and graphic offer no actual information and provide no link to more information. The point seems to be a chance to showcase a graphic that moves. Totally awesome! This Web 2.0 is really amazing! Let’s get a tagcloud next!

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.