EDU 2.0: New Web Site Design

We update the EDU 2.0 web site every 3-6 months based on user feedback, and we're currently going through another design iteration. I'm very excited about the upcoming changes, which address the following issues:

1. Too much vertical real estate is taken up by navigation.
2. There's no obvious place to put things like shortcuts and online presence.
3. We don't make great use of the horizontal real estate and many pages have lots of white space.
4. People have mentioned that the "playful" look of our site hurts our image.

Here are some almost-final sketches of the new design. The current site is about 3cm thinner than most web sites, so we're widening the site and making use of the extra space.

First, a typical page. This makes *really* good use of the wider real estate! A school/business logo goes into the 3x3 cm square on the upper-left. So *all* the navigation only takes up the top 3cm of the browser window. The current design takes up about 7cm.

Down the left side goes customizable items like shortcuts, news, and online presence. The news feed is like your school's/business's own private twitter, so teachers can add items into their student's news feeds, posting links, documents, images, etc. Note also that we're going to start making better use of horizontal real-estate by having some sections only take up 1/2 - 2/3 of the width of the page. The home page for example will contain a lot more information than it does now.

All of the colors will be completely customizable, and we'll keep a gallery of some of the best color schemes.

Second, a school home page. This is not much different except that a school banner will be 3cm wider, the windows probably won't have rounded edges anymore, and the extra "border" around the windows has gone for a sharper look.

Comments

[José A. Mari Mutt]

When will the new design be online? Will you change only the design or will the functionality also change? By this I mean will there be changes to the tools? How assignments are found, etc.?

[MB]

Graham,

This new L&F looks great, especially for the business version (I actually don't mind the current layout for K12).

Any idea when this will be going live?

Are you planning on offering the current layout as an option as well? Some may have resources (screenshots, instructions etc) based on the current layout and may wish to not change mid term/semester/year.

MB

[Graham Glass]

Hi MB,

The new design will go live before the end of February. It's not practical to maintain the old design as well, so it will just switch over. However, your existing color scheme and banner will be retained, so it won't look that much different and the way you navigate is essentially unchanged. I don't think anyone would have difficulty in mapping screenshots of the current site to the equivalent look of the new site.

Cheers,
Graham

[Account Deleted]

Hi Graham,

Looking forward to the new design.
One, because the real estate in the columns would be useful, but most of all it's customizable! Love that!
~ Coni

[MB]

Graham,

This is unrelated to this article about the redesign, I just wanted to say that your Facebook quote "I wish haircuts had an 'undo' option" is hilarious!