This site is a vital tool that allows Dickinson to communicate with all members of our community, from current Dickinsonians to those who are learning about the college for the first time. Last year, nearly 900,000 individuals visited dickinson.edu. We need to ensure that the site they're viewing is easy to navigate and clearly reflects Dickinson's mission and values.
That's why the development of this site was a community effort. Before we began thinking about its navigational and visual design, we formed the Web Advisory Committee, a group of faculty, staff and students, to discuss and outline what the Web site should be for all of its audiences.
Most importantly, we wanted a site that was as forward-thinking and revolutionary as Dickinson itself, and we needed it to be intuitive to use as well.
Design
After a 14-month development process in partnership with the creative agency 160over90, we feel we’ve achieved that vision, from the site’s bold use of photography and typography to its responsive design, which allows pages to be optimized for viewing on any screen size. While many other colleges have a responsive homepage, very few have a site that is responsive throughout. This is an important feature, as many of our new site visitors use mobile devices.
Navigation
The navigation of the site is organized so that external users, who are likely to be unfamiliar with the college’s internal structure, will quickly be able to find the information they need. Different groups of users—current students and parents, faculty/staff and prospective students and their parents—each have their own audience dashboard, which includes links that are most relevant to them.
We also wanted the site to be accessible to all of our visitors, so we designed it with the World Wide Consortium’s accessibility guidelines in mind. Some of those considerations include font size, color variations for links, alternate text and other features that make the Web site more accessible to the visual- and hearing-impaired.
Feedback
Even with all of this work, we recognize that dickinson.edu is and always will be a site in progress. If you notice any bugs, hit any roadblocks or have any questions, please contact us at webmaster@dickinson.edu.
While the marketing & communications and library & information services teams are primarily responsible for maintaining this site, most of the content you’ll see here is the result of the good work of our departments and offices, which oversee their own sections of the site. This means that, just as we started, dickinson.edu will continue to be a community effort.
Thanks for visiting.