EarnMyDegree.com website critique
To be honest, I was reluctant to take on this ReviewMe review for EarnMyDegree.com.
The reason being that I don’t place any value in online graphic design degree programs.
You can’t take a course in visual communication without social interaction.
Group discussions, critiques and reviews of other designers’ work are all a necessity for a successful graphic design course. Would you agree?
With that said I’m going to review the website from a design and usability standpoint.
First impressions
Poor.
Take a look at the screenshot above (or visit the online graphic design degree homepage) and tell me I’m wrong. If there was ever a slight hope of gaining trust in an online graphic design degree, the website that’s selling needs to be well designed.
It’s bland, very text heavy, and looks like a template straight out of the Dreamweaver box. Certainly not something to inspire. If they offer graphic design products they should surely know a little about it themselves. Know your product.
I’ve nothing against stock photography, but there are some photos you can tell are staged for stock shots, just like the main one on the homepage for graphic design (shown below).
What I’d love to see is more imagery, and more compelling imagery at that. Sure, the navigation is obvious, which is good, but what’s the point if I don’t want to navigate through the site?
I don’t like the logo either. There’s no idea behind it, other than emphasis on ‘My’.
Suggestions for site improvement
There’s a need for a re-design, both for the logo and for the website, but here I’ll suggest a few ideas that can be implemented immediately.
Increase the size of the logo by about 50% and give it some breathing space. It needs to be more emphasized ahead of the other site elements and it’s currently squashed up in the corner, almost suffocated.
Cut a lot of text from the graphic design homepage and add more imagery. Images that say ‘graphic design‘ and ‘visual communication‘ – not ‘stock photography‘.
Increase the size of the horizontal navigation bar to promote further information.
Add testimonials to gain trust.
Change the site to a fixed width layout. It’s odd how half the site is fluid and half is fixed (such as the online learning centre pictured below).
Personally I don’t like fluid site designs. It takes some of the control away from the designer / developer, and in this case increases the number of words on one line to above what is comfortable to read (I use a large monitor).
The website doesn’t validate. Neither does mine, mainly due to third party additions, so I’m not exactly one to preach on this. Nevertheless, I think it’s worth pointing out in a website critique.
To conclude
I’ll say it again. I don’t place any value in online graphic design programs. I apologise for the negativity in this review, but I do hope that my suggestions are taken on board for web design improvements.
Why not take a look at my 5 important design aspects of any website or blog?
Related posts on this site
23 spot-on reader comments to “EarnMyDegree.com website critique”
What are your thoughts?
Simply fill in the form below. All comments are moderated so you may experience a short delay before your comment appears. Comments should be respectful of other voices in the discussion. I reserve the right to edit or delete comments at my discretion.
Very honest review David.
Regarding the distance learning thing, I agree with what your point. My part time course only takes me into class half a day a week, and sometimes i don’t bother with that because it can be more productive at home. Therefore I totally understand how the lack of social interaction can make things more difficult! However, it’s my only option. And that’s my point - maybe distance learning is the only option someone has. You’re in your mid-thirties and you want to change career - what do you do? In which case it’s a little unfair to dismiss distance learning as an option.
Thanks for your take on things. What course is it you’re doing? Fair play for taking one on outside your full-time job.
It’s not that I’m dismissing distance learning courses. Just those for graphic design.
Some of the best lessons I’ve learnt were from my peers and tutors, telling me my work was crap. It helped give me a ‘thick skin’ and pushed me to constantly improve.
One thing I noticed on the website I reviewed is that there are no prices listed. I’m guessing an online degree isn’t cheap. What I’d personally suggest to anyone thinking about enrolling is to take a portion of the degree cost and buy books. Teach yourself (which is basically what you’re doing with the online course except you’re paying more).
I’d be surprised if there’s anything you can learn through the online degree that you can’t pick up in books or through independent research.
Then there’s the question of reputation. A prospective employer will look at your portfolio first, then work experience, then education. “Where did you get your degree?” is a standard question and it’s my opinion that an offline course, no matter where, is more valuable than online.
Would you agree?
I’m studying new media design. I pretty much do everything from home, although I do have to go in to present my work to the class and tutors.
I do agree with you - and about the offline courses being more valuable than online, without doubt (although OU is held in very high regard - but they don’t do arty courses) - and I must admit that if I had the choice, EarnMyDegree.com would not even factor. But if I lived in a small town in the middle of America, the nearest city was a few hundred miles away, I had to work to live and the only connection I had to the outside world was the internet, it might be worth a look?
I agree with Aaron - a very honest review and I hope the EMD.com guys take your advice!
I wonder what kind of a review the site owners were expecting? It looks like the site was designed in early 90s and hasn’t been redesigned since.
It would’ve made more sense for those guys to actually get their site re-designed first and then ask for a review.
True - it’s very strange web presence considering the forum. Nothing to arrest you on the front page or otherwise signify that you can learn some clever design angles within their programs.
Looks more like the self-help companies that are catered to people who left school early and are trying to go back and score the necessary credits.
Would’ve made far more sense to use some splash like the following example. Fanshawe’s local to me and has a stellar rep in the art community.
This is a .pdf link so so don’t open it if you tend to avoid Adobe sites.
http://www.fanshawec.on.ca/art/art1.pdf
Well I am not a fan fully of online schools myself. But for some schools their online programs are pretty good. For example my school’s online courses require that you participate in discussions online. They are taught by actual instructors from the school as well. One of my instructors actually brought in some work from the online school as examples for a project, and mentioned the discussion that had gone one for the project as well.
I mean I have been in classes where no one in the class says anything. Those are the classes no one ever mentions that are bad. I mean no feedback is like no way to improve. On my online class (the one that I am taking) I get lots of feedback.
Also all this site is, is a place to refer you to online schools. It is pretty useless in general. I have no way to get any real information from these places at all. It looks like the only reason they wanted a review was to get a higher ranking on google.
Those are interesting comments, about how you’ve had better feedback online than in some classes. They help shine a different light on Aaron’s scenario of living in the middle of nowhere.
I agree with you, Aaron, that OU (Open University) is held in very high regard for distant learning. The OU logo is quite a popular one too. ;)
You’re right, Vivien.
It would’ve made more sense for a review of a new site design. I also wonder what the purpose of the request was.
Paper Bull,
I’m not a fan of splash pages because they usually add an uneccessary click for the reader, but I agree that the PDF you linked to is certainly a better advertisement than the EarnMyDegree website.
Ilker,
Thanks for stopping by and for the comment.
I’ve never “learned by distance”, but I don’t think there’s anything about graphic design that makes it any more unsuitable as a subject to be studied off site. In fact, I think that Graphic Design is perhaps more suited to this method than, say a Science subject (biology experiments at home!?).
David, I do see where you’re coming from though. Ideally any subject is best learned in close contact with experienced teachers.
I do think that the credibility of distance learning and on-line degrees has been tarnished by the numerous scams surrounding them.
Personally, I have no problem with the paid-for posts/reviews, and your candid appraisal has demonstrated your credibility.
The site is truly awful. First impression: “get me out of here!”. It ’s as though all the content just merges into one unhealthy mass. The colour palette (is there one?) is dull and uninspiring, and there’s absolutely no focal point. I got dizzy when first looking at it.
I’m also no fan of fluid designs (though in some instances they can work). Who’s comfortable reading across 1000 pixels? Consistency is also a problem; when I went to the Learning Centre page, the layout changes to a much narrower fixed-width, 2-column.
Another thing that completely threw me was when I used the Quick Degree Finder; I made my selections (sub menus populated - pleasant enough experience), and then I found myself on University of Phoenix web site.
My suggestion to them would be to have their students design their site - it couldn’t be much worse. Hope I don’t sound too harsh in all this.
But after having said all that, I don’t think it would take much effort to improve the site ten-fold. A bit of CSS, a larger logo as you suggest, perhaps fixed width and a little bit of something to differentiate the content groups The actual copy and the course itself looks pretty good - they just need a web site that reflects that.
I also think that a review prior to a redesign makes much more sense. Have it reviewd, find out what’s right/wrong with it, then set about fixing it.
And who mentioned a “splash page”?! Goodness, I almost had a cardiac arrest. There is only one place for splash pages - The river Styx. Or, and I quote Dante, “The seventh level of Hades is reserved for those committing the most heinous of crimes…among them the splash page designers….” — The Divine Comedy, CantoXXXIV (Abridged).
I’d be curious to see a fluid website design that you enjoy. I can’t think of one off the top of my head although I don’t come across them very often.
Your suggestion to have students design the site is a good one, even though the site itself doesn’t seem to offer courses, instead referring people to other educational establishments (as Chief pointed out).
A good fluid design I like…um..you’ve got me there. Somebody help me!
Point taken re the site being a kind of portal to those establishments offering distance learning degrees. However, is that obvious from the site? Perhaps it is - perhaps I just missed that.
johno and David, here is my collection of 16 stunning liquid websites.
I took a look through them. Some nice examples, some I’m not so fussed about. Good of you to piece that together though.
As I said over on your site, I’m a fan of Lisa Sabin-Wilson and I enjoy the Italian GNV site. They do some sterling work.
You’re welcome, David.
Some of the sites in the collection were chosen to show different approaches in laying out the design for a liquid site.
Lisa’s and GNV sites are two of my favourites too.
The GNV site looks nice and, although it’s fluid, it’s not dealing with any text - so only the header is really affected. It works because it’s only displaying images. Personally, I don’t like to read more than 20 words per line.
And I don’t really understand the whole fluid layout thing. Why? I’m happy to read my books without stretching the paper, my newspapers and magazines too. I never intentionally cater for those users with 800*600 res screens, and those with giant-size displays won’t want to read a line of copy that’s 2850px wide; so I just don’t get the need for the fluid layout. And I just don’t care that the content resizes when I resize my browser window - I never resize it. I work on a workstation with 3 screens and on my laptop, and I’m happy to have the content author/designer present me with a fixed width layout. And if for some strange reason I resize my window to 200px wide, then I can’t really complain when I can’t see the other 600px.
I think I’m in one of my critical moods today. Please no-one take offense :)
And one more thing: I like to see some white space. It comforts me, helps me get my bearings. The white space helps me find the content. Until David’s asking me to name a fluid layout that I like, I was a fluid-agnostic; now I’m fluid-atheist.
I must get on and write my own post! I must unsubscribe your feed or I’ll never get it written ;)
WOW-wow-WoW
Talk about passionate designers :-)
I personally do often, if not always resize the browsers, I don’t work with multiple screens and I often need to fit two application windows side by side. In such cases it’s more convenient to deal with fluid/liquid sites.
On a big screen I never maximize the browser so I never end up reading looong lines of text. Plus, there are different ways of creating a liquid website, and that’s what I’ve tried to show in my collection.
Did you see http://uwmike.com ? - it has lots of white space and it is liquid.
I’m not trying to convert you here, johno. Just talking out loud. I personally like having an open mind in design, and in life in general.
ooops… I think my previous comment has been flagged as spam.
Thanks for unspamming it, David :-)
Vivien,
I saw that site before when reading your post. It’s nicely done, but I’m still not convinced. I get your point about working on a smaller screen, but couldn’t you just cycle through the windows? I’m not saying you should; I’m just thinking of how one might justify fluid designs.
I’m open for conversion, but you’ll have a better chance tomorrow (I’m terribly intransigent today!).
However, this is an interesting discussion. And a big thumbs-up to open-mindedness, Vivien :D
Doesn’t a website need to be fluid in order to be truly accessible?
The organisation where I work has a fluid website, and I hate it - it’s really poorly designed. But as it’s an educational website I think it had to use a fluid design in order to meet it’s accessibility requirements.
[...] post is the passionate offspring of a discussion that began over at David Airey’s site. In reviewing a site, he wrote (almost in passing), that he wasn’t keen on the fluid* layout. As the comments to [...]
I’m in Ireland at the minute so my time is limited. I’ll be following the discussion at Johno’s site.
David,
Great review, strong points regarding design.
As for the on/off site aspects of web courses, I think both are viable. The internet is designed for autodidact learning. Those that want to learn will make the most of the course.
As for your suggestions, right-on. It looks like the site was designed by programmers. They take ‘function’ over form, every time. There is no visual hierarchy at all.
really nice review.
I hope things are going well with you.
Thanks for the compliment and I’m glad you liked the review.
You make a great point in that, “Those that want to learn will make the most of the course.”