Chemical Education Today
Association Report: ACS Education Division
What Goes into Good Web Design? A Report on the New ACS Web Site by Adam Boyd and Natasha Bruce
Figure 1. The new global navigation, which has been designed to improve usability.
On Sunday, September 30, 2007, the American Chemical Society launched its new Web site—www.acs.org—and with it, ushered in a new era of accessibility on the Web. Usability and Findability Informed by research, the ACS Web site offers a new organizational structure that focuses on usability—the ability of even novice Web users to find what they want and accomplish their goals. One important improvement to the site’s usability is the overhaul of the global navigation, the horizontal bar of main categories that spans every page of the site. Unlike the old scheme, which offered a global navigation that included user-based categories such as “enthusiasts” and “professionals”, the new design offers a persistent navigation that anticipates high volume requests, offering easily understandable main categories such as meetings, publications, and education. In the new scheme, if you want information about a national meeting, you simply navigate to the meetings section by choosing it in the global navigation. The new global navigation has been designed to make finding what you want as easy as that (see Figure 1). The architecture of the new Web site is also different, which should improve the findability of any given piece of content. A new architecture means that the content areas are organized and categorized differently, thus changing the connectivity of the site. Both the content of the site and its organization were the main points of focus in this release of the new ACS Web site. Within the scope of Education, every page was rewritten and redeveloped by Education Division staff to support common user inquiries and make information easier to process. Paragraphs were shortened, and content was carefully reformatted to support users seeking information. The Education offerings also link to related content whenever possible, including the Journal of Chemical Education, thus helping to highlight other relevant ACS content or other education content of high value. Special attention was paid to providing links with more intuitive labels, which will allow users to find new programs and material without needing to know program names. For example, instead of providing a link that reads Wondernet—an Education Division program title with no inherent indication of its purpose—the new Web site uses Activities for Children, which all users should be able to understand. Other features that should improve the user experience include a breadcrumb trail at the top of each page that alerts users to their location within the site (see Figure 2). With each click, the breadcrumb trail changes to show you where you’ve 20
navigated, allowing you to see where you are within the site at all times and navigate backward quickly in either a stepwise or multi-step fashion. Testing, Testing… Throughout the development process, user testing has played a major role in developing the new Web site. In the case of the new site architecture, extensive user research was done into how information should be grouped. One type of research tool, called a “card sort”, pulled together the most prominent terms and programs and asked a diverse collection of users to group the content in the fashion they found most intuitive. Results from several sessions were pooled to form a collection of data that helped the ACS Web team discern how users expect to find content, which shaped the final design. Another prominent example of the importance of testing is the new ACS homepage. During testing, users were given a blank homepage with four empty boxes and asked what content should be used to fill them. The unanimous response was that those four boxes should contain research, news, announcements, and membership information. This is precisely what now constitutes the new homepage. Likewise, the decision to change the domain name from www.chemistry.org to www.acs.org was the result of user research. After extensive testing, the ACS Web team determined that the American Chemical Society “brand” resonated very strongly with users. Rather than launching a Web site with a separate brand, testing suggested that the new ACS Web site should be a part of the strong society branding, which is why www.acs.org was chosen. The result of the rigorous testing is a complete reorganization of content across the Web site that folds together formerly disparate content and reinforces commonalities designed to help to streamline user experience. Where Is It? Because of the reorganization, those who have used our site in the past will notice that things aren’t where they used to be. That can be a good thing! Following from the new architecture, content has been recast and reorganized to improve the user experience for those interested in education at all levels. In the new scheme, there is not the same emphasis placed on sorting education content strictly by grade level. The new site does include grade levels where most appropriate (under “Educational Resources”, for example) but also provides other topic categories such as Community Outreach, Policies, Standards, and Guidelines, and Educators and Faculty.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 85 No. 1 January 2008 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • © Division of Chemical Education
Chemical Education Today
Figure 2. The Education index page on the new ACS Web site. The arrow points to You Are Here, the breadcrumb trail.
For example, if you were looking for a textbook for your undergraduate class, you would find ACS texts in the Undergraduate Section of the Educational Resources content grouping. Conversely, however, if you want to volunteer your services in a classroom you simply choose Volunteer in a Classroom in the Community Outreach content grouping. The new organization does not require you to know that the “Kids & Chemistry” program, which might be a helpful resource for classroom volunteers, is administered by the K–8 unit at ACS. Together, these content groupings circumscribe the gamut of materials that relate to education and help to outline them in a clear fashion. Often, the same content can be accessed through more than one category: this is known as intentional redundancy. To improve the search experience for all users, a special effort was made to provide links to the same information from all locations where it might reasonably be expected. When you visit the site for the first time, you’ll also notice that in the sidebar (the area at the right hand margin of every page), there are often related links. On the Education pathway page, this area is used to highlight all publications related to chemical education as well as the ACS Committees relevant to the Education Division at ACS. For example, you’ll find links to the Committee on Professional Training (CPT) and the Society Committee on Education (SOCED). Questions In the event that you have a question or can’t locate something easily, use the quick links on the Education main page to contact program managers in the Education Division. Also, you can choose Help from the navigation bar above the search box at any time, which will direct you to a list of frequent inquiries, give you the opportunity to send an email directly to ACS staff,
or allow you to inform the Web team of a problem you are experiencing with the Web site. What’s Next? The ACS Web site is not finished! As the Web presence initiative continues, attention will turn to online collaboration and e-commerce. From developing online communities for High School Chemistry Clubs, to creating forums for comments and feedback, ACS will continue to look for new ways to harness the power of the Web in subsequent releases. Work is also progressing on the National Science Digital Library Chemistry Pathways project, which will serve as a clearinghouse for information about chemical education and will eventually have a presence on www.acs.org. With input from users, www.acs.org will continue to develop and move closer to its goal of building online value for all users, every time. Supporting JCE Online Material
http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2008/Jan/abs20.html Full text (PDF) with links to cited URLs
Adam Boyd is Web Associate and Natasha Bruce is Senior Web Editor, Education Division, American Chemical Society, 1155 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036; a_boyd@acs. org and
[email protected].
© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 85 No. 1 January 2008 • Journal of Chemical Education
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