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Aesthetic Pet Peeves of USF


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So we all know that we don’t have the best reputation when it comes to aesthetically pleasing things at USF. Although there have been a lot of pleasant changes, and plans for the future (i.e. new Marshall Center, Research Park, new Athletic Complex, new Athletic logos etc. ) I’m curious to know what everybody’s biggest pet peeve is in hopes of creating more discussion and possibly acting on such concerns.

For example, my biggest pet peeve is the USF homepage. I know I’ve already made posts about my displeasure, but it continues to irk me more and more every day I look at the thing. It’s amateurish, inconsistent, and if I were a prospective student or someone trying to find out more about the university, by looking at the web site I would not come to the conclusion that this University has grand aspirations to become a premiere research institution.

We even have links from the main page that take us to other pages that look nicer than our home page. An example is below. Although not perfect, it still has a nice sweeping picture and simple elegance.

http://www.acad.usf.edu/

Other notable mentions for me:

Cooper Hall

USF TV Commercials

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Recognize that the "website" is not really one site, but more like many different sites on the same domain.  Different parts of the university are responsible for their own sections of the site, which is coordinated but not produced by academic computing.

Consider some other Top tier public schools (all members of the American Association of Universities - which is a goal of Dr. Genshaft):

http://www.umich.edu/

http://www.caltech.edu/

http://www.indiana.edu/

http://www.osu.edu/

http://www.tamu.edu/

http://www.buffalo.edu/

http://www.ucsd.edu/

http://www.uoregon.edu/

It looks to me that USF's website is on par with other "premiere research institutions" to me.

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Thanks for the reply Jim, your points are well taken.

I still disagree a little bit however. I realize that it is not all one site. I think I even narrowed my criticism down to the home page in my original post. Regardless, my argument stems from my opinion that it is more important for USF to put an effort into a nice home page than it is for any of the schools that you listed because all of these schools, as well as the remaining 54 AAU schools not listed, have established reputations. Chances are, checking out the home page for the AAU schools won't be the first impression people get because they've heard of these schools in one way or another. It's a lot different for us, which makes our home page that much more of a proactive marketing tool.

Just to branch off into the info that you provided about the different departments being responsible for their own pages, I understand when it comes to branching out into the different colleges, but I still feel that there should be some consistency up to a certain extent. For example, in the top row of links on the home page (see attached picture below), the first link "Prospective Students" takes you to a new page that has the same general theme as the homepage which is good. The second link starting with "Our Students" and beyond takes you to a completely different looking page which are remnants of the old home page theme. This is what I mean when I said inconsistent. Even if people don't have a problem with how it looks, it makes the user have a harder time with information gathering since there is no apparent pattern to how things are organized.

Another example of a piece of the site that seems like it is just left for dead, is the "online photo tour". See link.. http://usfweb2.usf.edu/tourusf/index.html

For a site that was re-done not too long ago, I feel we could have done a little better.

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I agree the site has significant problems with usability... I think part of the problem is the difference between static HTML pages and what appears to be some kind of content management system.

Could it be better? Sure.  Very much so.  I just don't think it's that far off base for an institution of higher learning.

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I agree with drewski. I think the hopepage is pretty sad looking. I came to USF as an out of state student from CT and the homepage was the first impression I got of USF. The tour was the sadest thing I ever saw and it still has never been updated. The tour that UCF has on their page blows the USF photo tour away. For a student out of state who may not be that familiar with schools in Florida, the website and virtual tour of the university is very important and USF could do alot to improve.

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The library.  The old engineering building.  The bunker across from the Sundome.

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cooper hall... the end.

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I love the business building. It's so much better than those usual cookie cutter buildings. Plus, it is energy efficient.

Cooper halls is pretty bad, but it's a staple of USF!

What is REALLY bad is the reclaimed water... supposedly reclaimed water isn't suppose to smell, but anyone who has walked by a USF sprinkler knows what I am talking about. That has GOT to go.

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It would be nice if the buildings at least bore some semblance of architectural consistency or "flow". It's like they just picked random building designs and just placed them next to each other. I realize that some of that is because there are "original" buildings and newer...but it's not very aesthetically pleasing.

Oh yah....get that darn elementary school off the campus and put up a football stadium  >:D

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I also kinda like the business building because of the uniqueness...however the blonde brick is what kills it for me. The new addition is top notch though!

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