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  • Site of the Week: Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business

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    Posted on October 18, 2010 at 4:09 pm

    Innovative is the best way to describe this week’s “site of the week”.

    Website: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/

    Lessons to be learned from this site:
    The website displays menus in a unique fashion, with an amoeba style cursor on the left that follows you when scrolling over the pictures. The stacked links above the main image expand to reveal even more information for the viewer to absorb. Notably, animation on this site is used as a navigation feature (“you’ve selected this”) rather than a prioritization feature (“click on me!”). While the non-linear navigation element is visually interesting and even entertaining, there are some usability and access concerns to weigh when using Flash and/or Javascript for navigation.  The use of roll-over states for navigation must offer an alternate, “access reader” view of the same navigation so that the site can be accessed by visually impaired or disabled users (section 508 is the statute that governs these standards), and many users disable Javascript for, among other reasons, privacy issues (according to a recent study done by Yahoo, about 2% of users disable Javascript).  Furthermore, Flash is not supported by several mobile platforms (e.g. iPhones and iPads), so an alternative version of the site must be developed to give mobile users a way to access the content (the Fuqua site didn’t work when tested on the Blackberry and iPhone devices in our offices) – and with mobile access to the Internet expected to overtake desktop access to the Internet in less than five years, considering the mobile version of your site is no longer a “some day” exercise.

    For more on mobile, check out our Digital Cooking Recipe #2.

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Burkey Belser

 Burkey Belser

Burkey Belser, president and creative director, pioneered legal services marketing. He has been quoted on brand design topics by dozens of industry publications and is highly rated as a speaker on topics from branding to information design.

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