Communication and Geography,
GEO/COM 490X
Wayfinding Exercise
You and a partner will team up to evaluate the easy of navigating the University web site.
Observe and take notes while your partner starting at the University web page searches for one of the web sites listed below. Your partner should talk as they surf and explain why they are choosing to click on particular links. Note down the following
1. Each page they click through and their reasons for doing so.
2. Any back tracking that they do-dead ends. Total these up at the end.
3. Note down each time they make a successful move that leads them toward the web site they are looking for.
Switch Roles and find a different site
Using only links (not the A-Z site index or search) find the following
sites.
Find the In Quest of Beauty: The Life and Times of Junius R. Sloan, 1827-1900
web site.
Find the Celebration of Undergraduate Scholarship page.
Find the list of Available Student Positions (for students with workstudy
or university work-study award)
Find the Church Vocations Retreats Page
Questions to Discuss afterwards
1. What elements of a web site made wayfinding easier?
2. How does the way the pages are organized hierarchically aid or hinder
wayfinding?
3. How does spatial legibility influence wayfinding?
4. How might wayfinding be improved for the sites that you tried to find?
If time go to www.colorado.edu and find the following sites
1. The Geography Faculty Development Alliance Early Career Faculty Workshop
web site.
2. The website for the Colorado Shakespere Festival.
3. The recreation center web site.
4. The Ski Club Web site
Copyright 2004 Michael W. Longan
