This Web site is the result of the efforts of CSU, Chico students, faculty, staff, administration, and alumni.

We would like to thank the many people who made this a successful process: The 110 students, faculty and staff who gave feedback on a home page redesign in November; the 237 campus community members who answered a survey on the refresh concept in January; Communication Design Professor Fred Condo and his Web Practicum class for their expert advise; alumnus and Web designer Earl Jessee, who donated many hours to work on the refresh; and the 21 members of the Web Committee, who represent 17 different units across campus.

In May 2003, the CSU, Chico WWW Guidelines Committee identified the need to update the CSU, Chico Web site, which serves as the primary starting point for all faculty, staff, students, parents, and community members seeking information about the university.

In its commitment to real-world-based education, the university decided to offer the CSU, Chico Web redesign project to it’s own students in the Department of Communication Design, as it had successfully done 4 years prior in developing the existing CSU, Chico Web site.

During the effort to construct an informed and detailed list of criteria for its students to follow, CSU, Chico contacted Alum Earl Jessee (’01) to contribute his experience developing Web sites for the university while employed as a student. Jessee is now a partner in the Chico-based design and development company, LearningChange, comprised primarily of CSU, Chico alumni.

As such, LearningChange offered its design services to the university “pro bono” in an effort to help the university “refresh” the look of their Web site while retaining both the site’s existing information architecture and adhering to established university Web Page Publishing Guidelines (http://www.csuchico.edu/pub/). By doing so, the university continued its effort to develop consistency in its on-line documents—maintained by many different departments and individuals on campus—and maintained a basic set of aesthetic similarities with existing campus departments and organizational Web sites. This re-design effort would run concurrently with the CDES student class projects.

The requirements for a refresh were identified as follows:

• ADA and Section 508 Compliance
• Overall need for visual stimulus—more color, increased typographical hierarchy, larger and/or more vibrant images
• Retain enough of the graphic design elements so our new site maintains a clear connection to the graphic standards we use in print publications
• Photos—along with going larger, photos need more snap: unusual angles, exposures, etc.
• Bring fields of color, texture, and stronger, more easily swapped imagery into primary AND secondary navigation system.
• More intuitive and accessible treatment of “mouse over” information.
• Give more emphasis to “announcements,” “current events” (Chico Today), and “news” (Inside Chico State) to invigorate home page with timely, relevant content.
• Give more emphasis to “most searched for” terms in campus search engine.
• Make Web site template stretch to 100% of screen width (utilize screen real estate).
• Update style sheet (CSS) for use of hierarchical, more easily formatted and accessible content.
• Elevate visibility of school motto: “Today Decides Tomorrow.”

These criteria were presented to teams of CDES students, who began to develop proposals for the redesign and restructuring of the CSU, Chico Web site. In the meantime, LearningChange and the WWW Guidelines Committee continued to publish an interim “refresh” or “face-lift” for existing site, while addressing some imminent needs such as Section 508 Compliance and elevation of the “most searched for” campus information, as identified by server usage records and search data.

The university took the following steps in response to the above criteria:

• Extended use of randomized photography to secondary page level.
• Drew emphasis to well-used footer links with photography.
• Personalized home page design with use of photography containing students, faculty, and staff.
• Made better use of screen real estate by implementing a “liquid” design on all secondary/tertiary pages and a “static-centered” design on the home page.
• Introduced school colors into design system: red, white, black, gold (yellow).
• Increased accessibility and usability of navigation mouseOvers—from image-based pop-up detail information in the header to a more functional and easily amended layer-based CSS/JavaScript hybridized navigation. I.e.å“drop-down” menus.
• Increased hierarchical structure of HTML/CSS2 to increase site accessibility, searchability, and relevance.
• Implemented Server-Side Include (SSI) templates to facilitate maintenance of header, footers, navigation, announcements, and news items (Chico Today and Inside Chico State)
• Elevated visibility of “most searched for terms” in the campus Web: “portal login,” “campus map,” “financial aid,” etc.

In November 2003 the refresh of the home page was shown to 110 students, faculty and staff. Feedback was solicited and compiled. In January 2004, a large cross-section of campus community members was sent a Web-based questionnaire asking them to rate the refresh of the home page against the current home page. Over a two-week period, 237 responses from faculty, staff, students and alumni were received. Respondents rated the home page refresh very favorably as compared to the existing page. On all eight questions about various aspects of a home page, at least two thirds of respondents gave a positive rating of a 4 or 5 on a 1-5 scale. Survey data analysis was presented to Web Committee in February, and final version of refresh prepared for administrative approval. Cabinet approved the refresh in March.

We Value Your Feedback

Please send comments about our Web site to the Webmaster, or comments about CSU, Chico to the Public Affairs director.