My Scarily Erudite Beloved is a an art historian by profession and and recently spent some time in Boston attending the annual meeting of the College Art Association. Out of curiosity I took a look at “their website”:http://www.collegeart.org/. I was not surprised to find that their website is much better designed than the AAA’s — after all, it’s the website of a professional organization of people with an eye for the visual and physical properties of objects. But what did amaze me was that they had their own “official conference blog”:http://www.collegeart.org/blog/ — something that not even Savage Minds managed to do at the recent AAA. The more I looked at the site, the more and more impressed I became. The site is well-organized and information on it is easy to find, it is clearly oriented towards helping its members find jobs, employees, and fellowships. And most importantly of all, it taked advocacy seriously — the website has an ‘advocacy’ drop down menu which presents the issues the CAA is behind in jargon-free prose.
The art historians are kicking our ass! The CAA has about 13,000 members — roughly the same size as the AAA. And yet they’ve managed to get together a website which, based on twenty minutes or so playing with it, is clearly superior to ours. And don’t even get me started on APSA and ASA…
well, we are a buncha pansies after all…
I wish I could provide a decent sociological explanation for the lameness of our colleagues.
I agree with your criticism the AAA website is archaeic. Even without comparing it to the CAA, it has characteristics of old internet, pre Web 1.0. I wonder in the future if anthropologists will be deciphering and decoding design as archaeologists now do on lithics, ceramics, and other bone tools?
seconded, thirded. the AAA site is a piece of shit, and not just visually/aesthetically (which has a huge impact on making anthro attractive) but navigationally; their linking philosophy is ridiculuous and one can find content on one page, randomly, that doesn’t come from anywhere else. thick description it isn’t.
it’s too bad, there are some of us who are web designers and with a little investment the AAA could have a really nice site.
What’s amazing is that it hasn’t changed in years. Most websites (of non-profits or otherwise) have changed there website at least once in the past 6 years. This website is the same one they were using way back in 2000. It still has the same issues and weird organization (try finding the listing for field schools. It’s in an odd location).
Sorry about the typos.
Way back on Jan 30th I posted about how horribly designed the AAA website was [Will Anthropology Disappear in France?}:
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“pictures transmit more information than words ever can. all one has to do is visit the American Sociological Association website: http://www.asanet.org/index.ww
and then the AAA’s website: http://www.aaanet.org/
to see the difference. what nonverbal communication is being presented via these two websites’ design and organization? here’s what i perceive:
ASA site: Modern, accessible, organized. Mission statement right there “serving the PUBLIC GOOD”. Plus, a stock photo of actual smiling modern PEOPLE-which are what sociologists study. overall, progressive, accessible bunch of scientists.
AAA site: website design from 1995. marble background = cold. colors: unattractive. mission statement hidden on sub-page, and when found, resembles wordy legal jargon. goals stated at bottom are a nice try, but difficult to discern if study in this discipline translates to anything but more study. No artwork of anything anywhere on the site—no people, and perhaps the omission of such a photo is a good indicator of lack of focus. overall, old fashioned, distant, fractured association of scholars.
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Now someone noticed another website that surpasses the AAA’s. I have a background in graphic arts, and am at this moment still a sr art director for a scholarly publisher [who will remain anonymous]. but i also have an MA in applied anthropology, which to some may not be “scholarly” enough, but graphic design + anthropology is a unique and useful hybridization of skills.
like any other packaging, websites change over time. new technology and programs change what designers can do for the look and navigation of sites. website functionality and organizational conception has changed drastically the past few years. meeting “blogs” are a great idea. websites, of any “packaging” become dated very quickly. the AAA’s website is out of date by 7-10 yrs–in both the design and navigation/functionality categories. another clincher is too-wordy explanations defining AAA.
Rex is right, art historians are “kicking our ass”. but so are countless other societies. packaging, as much as academics loathe to admit, affects consumer behavior. sure, AAA members still go to the website because they have to, but what about attracting new members [which someone mentioned above]?? sure they’ll come, because they have to, or need to join, and the AAA site is somewhat functional, if still ugly and awkward to view. but what does that say about anthropology? websites aren’t designed for housepets. they’re designed by people, for PEOPLE. and aren’t “people” the subject of study in anthropology? with all that studying, shouldn’t the AAA have a modern, intuitive, organized, clearly understandable, functional website? the irony is glaring.
i’ve posted about the collaboration of anthropology and Marshall McLuhan on my blog, only to receive petty, nasty, childish, and anonymous criticism from supposed scholars [“phds”], deriding me about McLuhan, as if he’s a poor example. I don’t think many in anthro bother or care to read outside their narrow field, judging by the remarks. this is sad since McLuhan predicted the media matrix we live in now, including websites. McLuhan commented that technology is an extension of human beings, adding meaning and value [good and bad] to our existence. well, the AAA website is an extension of the association, and its 1995 design and obtuse navigation provides visitors a somewhat accurate visual description of the state of anthropology today.
of course some good graphic design and website organization could fix this and even add new things like blogs. but the organization would have to look beyond itself, maybe seek innovative thinkers to do this…and that is something i don’t see happening. i don’t even think they’re aware of the negative impact such poor visual presence promotes.
There is actually another way of thinking about this. If we compare the AAA web site to most university web sites it comes off looking not so bad. Even many corporate web sites might look nicer but still suck. My feeling is that large institutions are usually quite incapable of making design decisions. Same goes for architecture. There are some notable exceptions, but the norm is crappy design. So I’d be curious to know how the exceptions happen?
In 2001-2002, I was a web editor at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs (CCEIA). Our site was *awful* at the time — as the main person responsible for maintaining and posting to the site, even *I* couldn’t find where a lot of things went. A common problem among non-profit websites around the end of the ’90s was to organize the site to mirror the internal organization of the organization — something the AAA site is guilty of. So, there’s a Publications division and there’s the sections and so on — but what people who use the site want is information on *topics*, not *departments*. When I wrote my post on McFate and the military uses of anthropology, I searched high and low for the “Principles of Professional Responsibility” McFate quoted and couldn’t find it; as it turns out, it’s in a “Statements and Referenda” section of the site that isn’t linked to from the homepage. You have to know how to find it before you can find it — even the search engine didn’t get me to it.
As the CCEIA website became increasingly unruly as more and more content accumulated which couldn’t be tied to any particular department within the organization, the other Web person and I campaigned for a total revision. We ran up against several obstacles: 1) good money had ben spent on the site, and good money would have to be spent on a revision; 2) the site was still hosted and administered by the designers, a relationship that couldn’t easily be severed; and 3) most importantly, people at the CCEIA had invested their reputations in pushing for the existing design, and didn’t especially enjoy being shown up by a couple of upstart web geeks. Also, the website in many non-profits is considered “extra”, a luxury rather than a primary medium of engaging with an audience. All of this made our campaign especially delicate and fraught with danger — as the saying goes, the fight is so bitter because so little is at stake. People who work in non-profits generally receive a “psychological wage” above their salaries (they have to, as the salaries aren’t usually all that good, even at a Carnegie foundation) and so are heavily invested in a lot of seemingly petty details, the minor, local accomplishments on which their reputation and authority rest.
We did, however, ultimately manage to get the organization to back a redesign, and I spent the last several months I was there (before leaving NYC for my disseration research) writing up a set of design and content requirements, interviewing designers, and working with the new staff to develop a topic-driven site. The new site (at http://carnegiecouncil.org/, if you’re interested) has a number of improvements, not least the move away from the “power suit” colors that dominated non-profit site design in those days. Look, ma — white space! The tabs at the top point to themes like “Global Social Justice” where articles and information dealing with that topic “live”, whatever the department that originated the material. (Actually, the tab idea is a little overkill given the current themes — when we developed the concept, there were 6 themes, including conflict prevention and environmental justice; CCEIA must have restructured since I left.) For a 5 year old site, it’s holding up pretty well, I think.
On the other hand, the AAA site is on parchment, ‘cuz it’s classy and sober and conservative and… If I am interested in Native Americans, or rites of passage, or 4th World activism, or women in Iraq, where do I go? If I’m a student wondering whether or not to take “Psychological Anthropology”, where would I look? There’s nothing intuitive about the site — unless you work at the AAA, in which case you’d know what “program” a topic is likely to beling to.
Maybe a bunch of us oughtta mock up a revised site; hell, maybe a bunch of us oughtta form a website committee at the next AAAs and draw up a RFP for a new site? What would people like to see in a new site? What are the potential uses of a AAA website, and how might they be met?
Back in the day most scholarly publishing, universities, societies, almost purposely presented their materials in poorly designed packaging either for financial reasons or to stand apart from. Old journal covers and society pamphlets can attest to that. But that was before sophisticated visual/graphic design software, and before the internet.
While I agree that there are still plenty of crappy scholarly websites on the web, its no excuse. Websites are more than a journal volume or pamphlet. They are a hybrid, layered, interactive visual experience that cannot be compared to what came before. Good website design isn’t only pretty images or attractive colors–it also involves the sites organization, usability, and ability to present different kinds of information in various ways that makes for simple access. The best websites are almost fluid in their complex designs. They visually do not offend, they are organized logically, but with zen-like simplicity, and offer plenty of information on a revolving basis, promoting repeat visits, interaction, and clear communication.
For the “exceptions” to occur 3 things happen:
1. Those desiring to build their reputation, want repeat visits and new subscribers/members/students, realize their website’s visual presentation/organization/navigation is more important than print promotions and PR, and understand they must upgrade to attract/keep their clientel and to advance clear communication for their cause.
2. Society/University provides quality web building software [like Dreamweaver] instead of crappy low-end apps like FrontPage, that hasn’t changed in 10 years and is nearly impossible to use. Or they hire a design firm that has access to good tools and an intelligent, intuitive design team.
3. Those who fancy themselves artists [as well as jacks-of-all-trades] but have no knowledge or practical education in visual design or usability step aside and allow those who can do the website restructuring/upgrade/redesign.
From my experience, sometimes when people get degrees after their name they think it fortifies them to be ~artists~ though their education may be in law, medicine, science, or other unrelated field. They have no comprehension that visual design, like any other discipline, contains protocols, adheres to certain foundations that don’t change despite trends and technology–even if the graphic designer has natural talent, it must be trained to work within these rules. The ~artist~ thinks art+design = anything that pleases THEIR untrained eyes. Many times there’s no one to educate them, or they don’t care to learn, so walla! another crappy website, book cover, brochure, label, etc is born.
The whole point of good visual design is to communicate with nonverbal, visual tact and intelligence, to get your audience to absorb the information presented.
Unlike bad surgical techniques, consequences of bad design are subtle. human beings are very very visual by nature, so even if someone can’t explain why something sucks, their eyes will want to spend as little time as possible looking at whatever offends. For websites especially [like the AAA], this can be a *negative*.
I’ve done website development, and before starting from scratch to reinvent a website, its probably a good idea to look around the web and find other sites people like for different reasons [organization, content offering, design, navigation]. These examples are brought to the discussion table, along with a list of original ideas. The examples help focus the discussion and provide good starting points for a redesign without reinventing the wheel.
Example sites don’t have to be society or university sites, they can be unrelated in topic and still provide good ideas.
Actually, Patricia’s comment reminds me of another redesign that I was involved with that went wrong. When I worked at the Jewish Museum, I was on the website committee, charged with creating a RFP for a revised website. As Patricia notes, a big chunk of our work involved looking at other websites and noting what worked, what didn’t work, etc. (and then being told we could never afford to do any of the things that worked…). The old site was ok, although it was based on the design metaphor of Talmudic commentary — say, an artwork in the center and 4 pieces looking at the work from different perspectives (art historical, religious, etc.) arrayed around it — and required a lot of side-scrolling (not to mention some notion of how Talmudic commentary works). Anyway, the work our committee did was processed through the media committee (composed of publishers, editors, professors, network execs, and the like) and then through the funding process and the trustees and… When I left the museum after 9 months on the committee, we still didn’t have an RFP. Apparently the process killed the process, because the only thing that’s really changed in the last 6 years is the JM’s front page (which is, admittedly, far better than the old one, though that’s not saying much); the inside of the site is somewhat confusing. They make great one-off stuff — web installations, exhibition websites — but the whole is still rather messy.
Thinking about the organization more, I think I’ve narrowed down what I think the main problems with the website are, no particular order:
1. There are two different organizational existing on the same page with different information in each. There’s the horizontal part at the top (About AAA, Join AAA, Jobs Careers, etc.) and the vertical column on the left. Most websites choose to either have a horizontal column at the top or a vertical column (either on the right or left or both). If they have both, each column has the same information or is organized using frames so you can see all the information in the columns and horizontal block at the same time.
2. As someone mentioned before it’s organized around the structure of the organization. Instead, the website should be organized by the type of user and what sort of information they will want to get. So there should be a section for grad students, undergrads, potential members, current members, job seekers, the public and journalists. (All of these are groups that would generally have very specific reasons for going to the website.) They sort of have this with sections on the media and student resources but these sections don’t really seem to fufill the role they should. The media section needs a list of experts on various fields so a reporter can instantly figure out if a local anthropologist can speek about some local issue. The student section really needs to differentiate between grad students and undergrads who have very different concerns.
3. The “update” portion of the site is muddled (i.e. “what’s new”). It contains both updates about AAA administrative business and updates to the actual site. These need to be seperated into seperate sections.
4. There are no pictures beyond journal covers and somewhere in San Jose. If anthropology is about people then where are the people.
5. The collection anthro resource links is very, very poor. Some are outdated while others aren’t really relevant to grad student or professors. Again, these need to be seperated into categories for the user.
I think that all of these points cover the basics of what should be standard website organization by now.
One thing I notice about the College Art Assoc. web site: Although it isn’t mentioned anywhere, Firefox auto-discovers their RSS feed! AAA doesn’t even have one…
What scares me is that I know any suggestion to improve the AAA web site will result in a multiple choice survey of membership asking them how they use the site (didn’t I just do one of those?).
Back in the summer of 2004, I did an independent study about the relationship between anthropology and computing, and created the CMA page to share all the information I had collected. My knowledge of web design is limited, but I did the best I could with the time and knowledge that I had. John McCreery’s recent statement about “academics who preach community and equality while going at each other like junkyard dogs” rings true in describing the reaction I got from many anthropologists when I went public with the site. Many people wrote e-mails and blog entries trashing the site design, but not one of them offered to lend a hand in making it better. I am reminded of a question that Rex asked regarding Wikipedia in an old entry here: “People with expertise, in other words, are reading the wikipedia but are not contributing to it. Why?” And similarly, anthropologists who were obviously well-versed in web design were taking the time to write scathing e-mails about my site, but it apparently never occurred to them that I might welcome an offer to help redesign the site.
Unlike myself, AAA should have the resources to design a better site, so it is puzzling why they have not done so already. In spite of this, I am glad to see responses to this entry like this:
It is nice to know that there are anthropologists out there who actually want to help, not just complain.
Updating and redesigning a site as large as the AAAs is a huge undertaking, and should be handled by a team of professionals, not an adhoc assembly of well-wishers, no matter how sincere. The AAA is a professional organization, collects professional fees, has financial resources, so requires something more than people providing mockups on their lunch hours.
I’ve done corporate, society, and ecommerce website redesigns, and they take months and months of hard work from a dedicated staff. There’s so many layers to this, because the medium is so interactive and technology driven, and all the parts must converge and work together. This is not a saturday afternoon brunch discussion. I participated in AAA’s survey. I provided criticism and suggestions for the improvement of their site from a graphic professional’s point of view. Since then, nothing. The site still sucks, and will continue to as long as they don’t take action. I am a paying member of the AAA and don’t believe their website does a good job serving its membership. It is not my job to fix this, it is theirs.
They’re not a bunch of HS dropouts, so I would imagine that at some point the lightbulb will turn on over some of the AAA administration heads that the current website certainly isn’t helping the association reach its goals. Then they need to go outside the organization for professional assistance to fix the problem.
Noah writes: “It is nice to know that there are anthropologists out there who actually want to help, not just complain.”
And your mock up of the AAA website is where? 😛
Seriously — perhaps we should get a group together to put together some sort of AAA website in exile. Any interest?
If I had the web design skills to remake the AAA website to the liking of everyone here, then I probably would not have gotten such a harsh response to my own site. 🙂
Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting a bunch of us write a new site in our spare time or anything (though I’d go along with Rex’s project — in fact, I had hoped that the Anthro-L webiste I put together at anthrogeeks.com might have developed into something that could fill some of the gaps the AAA’s site misses, like Anthro FAQs). But a website committee — a standing committee, not just a brunch meeting — that could offer a steady stream of input towards a redesign is, I think, a good idea. Unlike Patricia, I don’t see the AAA as solely meant to “serve” me — we’re not AAA customers, we’re AAA *members*, and I think we have a role to play in shaping the organization to meet our needs. Non-profits are conservative at the best of times, and downright stodgy the rest of the time. If we wait until the AAA admins “wake up”, we’re going to find ourselves further and further marginalized. I have students and colleagues that read the APA site, the ALA site, and other professional organization websites — the AAA site should be the first, and usually last, stop for non-anthros as well as anthros looking for information on and in the field. Can we really afford another 6 years of people saying “if it’s not even mentioned here, why bother looking anywhere else?”
The AAA is already filled with staff, executive boards, committees, and section assemblies:
*AAA Headquarters Staff*: 25+ employees
*Executive Board:* 16 members
*Committees:* 17
*Section Assembly:* 38 Sections
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“Member Services” is a section too. I work full time to pay for membership and meetings. I’m already contributing to the AAA in cash. I have experience with website redesigns and am not afraid to say the website does not serve the membership as it should nor helps attract new members. However I realize this is not something that can be solved by volunteers.
Oneman is misunderstanding this. The website’s fundamental perception within the AAA organization must change. AAA wants to attract new members and promote itself, right? Then the website is more important than realized. All the committees, executive boards, office staff, and members need to comprehend this. Forming another committee will not build a new site. The AAA bureaucracy needs to investigate options. They can host a volunteer committee, but they also must look outside the organization for help, like a real web development service which can provide the required expertise for such a large undertaking. But first they must acknowledge the current website does not serve its membership or the association as well as it should.
Oh I think the AAA is well aware of the problem, and my understanding is that rewriting the website is among their top priorities, they’ve just hired a new director of IT, etc. etc. Its just that the organization is not, as they now say, particularly ‘agile.’ It’s not the recognition that’s the problem, as far as I can tell, its the AAA’s “capacity.”
In addition to many of the design issues discussed here, the AAA site has no space for online discussion boards, whether blog or wiki style. A couple of years ago a website was set up to facilitate organization of the annual meeting (http://culturalheritageinternational.org/anthrocommons/)
but this seems to have been largely abandoned since.
It seems that something along these lines could be integrated with the AAA website and/or Anthrosource.
On a related note, my repeated (each of the past six academic years) attempts to convinvce the faculty and administrators of my department to update their site (unchanged since the late 90s) has met with great resistance and amazing excuses (“but, how will we make changes on the new site?”). One faculty member was apparently surprised to hear that prospective graduate students might be using the website to research the department in preparing to apply.
The online discussion area debuted at the 2004 meeting. I remember checking it out and thinking it was very unique in its setup and organization. It didn’t use standard message board software, and somewhat clumsy to use. It was widely advertised at the 2004 meeting–but I think its interface contributed to lack of use.
Diss writer’s comments are interesting–“One faculty member was apparently surprised to hear that prospective graduate students might be using the website to research the department in preparing to apply.”
Could you imagine?
I’m running into similar problems now. I’ve returned to my dept as an alumni to see if I could be of service–the new dept chairperson asked that I help the student volunteers redo the dept’s website [incredibly out of date and useless by 2005 standards]. I began in earnest in early January working with the students, but have run into several huge roadblocks. The University doesn’t really support dept’s website efforts beyond leaving space on the server to upload. There’s only one dept laptop to do all the work on. And, the software available from the univ is FrontPage 🙁 which is old and difficult to use. When I’d inquired about having the univ supply better software [Dreamweaver] or getting IT to supply, I was told there’s no budget for it. So right now I’m trying to figure out what to do.
Meanwhile, the dept lacks new students, and faces increased competition from online programs [anyone check out the new Online Applied Masters from North Texas U?] so I website expansion and upgrade are greatly needed. The chairperson is new, so can’t devote too much time to this. This isn’t an ivy league school or anything, but one of only 2 MA anth programs in my state, so I think a better online presence is required. I just don’t know how to get the bureaucracy to realize how important this is.
My Culture Change course had discussed how one culture infultrates another, changing the fundamentals from the inside out. Perhaps this thinking must be more broadly applied to include technology advancements. There is a definite “culture change” at work here, and the AAA needs to address it. AnthroSource was a good starter effort, but more is needed. If the AAA stresses the importance of increased technology, the univ depts will probably follow.