UCD Website

parko202

How's it going?

I am doing a project in which we have to critique the UCD website with specific focus on the UCD Engineering section of the site.

As the engineering section is pretty similar to the majority of other schools' sections most general information will also be applicable.

I would be interested to get peoples opinion on how they feel the website is designed and what they would do to improve it?

Any comments greatly appreciated,

Cheers

graduate

"people's" views are only useful if you know who they are. The website serves multiple constituencies, prospective undergrads, actual undergrads, prospective postgrads, actual postgrads, people looking for engineering experts in Ireland, international academics seeking to establish the nature of UCD engineering school etc....

parko202

Thanks for the response, I should have said that if you are giving your opinion on it could you please state what type of user you are.

We are looking for a range of opinions to be provided as realistically, a range of people will be using the site and as a result, it should cater for each group.

ironclaw

parko202 wrote: »

Thanks for the response, I should have said that if you are giving your opinion on it could you please state what type of user you are.

We are looking for a range of opinions to be provided as realistically, a range of people will be using the site and as a result, it should cater for each group.

I've always found information very hard to find. A more intuitive search feature. And maybe tailoring UCD Connect to your course. i.e. Eng users would have Eng notices etc.

stop

Well for Elec & Mech Eng, they could start by getting rid of the old sites(elec eng & mech eng) and getting all the relevent data off them onto the main eem site. Why bother to integrate the two old departments & still keep things seperate?

parko202

ironclaw wrote: »

I've always found information very hard to find. A more intuitive search feature. And maybe tailoring UCD Connect to your course. i.e. Eng users would have Eng notices etc.

Ironclaw, are you an engineering student/ enrolled in another program / alumni, if you prefer not to say thats grand too.

Yeah, the difficulty of finding information has arisen quite a lot. I saw in Imperial Uni in london, they have both Departmental and World Engineering News RSS feeds on their sites.

Do many people follow the UCD RSS feeds, how do you find them in terms of providing useful / interesting material?

Joneser

Just thought I would say that UCD are currently migrating all of their sites over to a CMS so depending on whether the site is of the old version or the new they will be a bit different.

n2o

ironclaw wrote: »

I've always found information very hard to find. A more intuitive search feature. And maybe tailoring UCD Connect to your course. i.e. Eng users would have Eng notices etc.

What's wrong with Google? http://search.ucd.ie/

parker kent

n2o wrote: »

What's wrong with Google? http://search.ucd.ie/

The internal google search on the UCD website is dreadful. It is much, much better to use the normal Google homepage and add UCD to your search terms.

ironclaw

parko202 wrote: »

Ironclaw, are you an engineering student/ enrolled in another program / alumni, if you prefer not to say thats grand too.

Yeah, the difficulty of finding information has arisen quite a lot. I saw in Imperial Uni in london, they have both Departmental and World Engineering News RSS feeds on their sites.

Do many people follow the UCD RSS feeds, how do you find them in terms of providing useful / interesting material?

I'm in Engineering as an Undergraduate.

As for RSS, not a fan personally. I want information specific to my course. I couldn't care less about the news feed on the main website. I've never read any of them if I'm honest.