Randolph College

www.randolphcollege.edu

This is the website of my undergraduate institution. It has been a women’s college for over 100 years, but due to financial hardship and declining enrollment – and after huge student and alumni protests – the college has gone co-ed this fall. The school was renamed, and its website has been totally redesigned with a new audience in mind. I thought it would be interesting to see how the designers tried to reflect and promote the changes at the school on the website.

Target audience: Randolph College now faces the difficult task of attracting male students to a historically female school, without (further) alienating its female alumni. This is evident in the opening page of the website. The header bar now features a sleek logo on a dark brown background, while the rest of the page follows a gender-neutral brown/blue/white color scheme. The choice of photo for the front is key – a female student remains in the foreground, but the background shows 3 male students and a male professor.

Content: The content of the site is very useful and accessible, and it is set up to include the interests of the male population. For example, the academics page opens with descriptions of engineering, biology and economic opportunities, and the heritage of the school is downplayed in the “About” section. The photos used on the site are mostly campus buildings and scenery, thus avoiding too many photos of female students.

Design: The website design has been greatly simplified. A similar structure is seen throughout the site: the header and logo at the top, a large menu bar along the right side, a horizontal photo that refreshes with every page change, and the page content in the remaining space.

Navigation: This simplified design makes navigation very simple and obvious. In my opinion, it is so standardized that it also lacks any sort of surprise/interest element, but for the prospective student researching schools, clarity and usability are key.

On the whole, I find the new design attractive and easy to use. In any case, the College’s online image will surely be central to the success or failure of its co-ed gamble - and its survival as an institution.