Entertainment Tonight and UNI.edu’s Inukshuk Content
August 30th, 2005
On the home page of the University of Northern Iowa’s web site, prospective students deciding where to attend college can read about Jen. Jen is a current student at UNI who shares some of the reasons she chose to attend the university.
The designers of UNI.edu have put considerable time and effort into sharing the experiences of people associated with the university. The site has more than 40 detailed profiles of students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
There’s a huge amount of information users can glean from these profiles. For example, since visiting the web site, I’ve already asked three friends, “Did you know Entertainment Tonight’s co-host, Mark Steines, attended the University of Northern Iowa?” With my addiction to t.v. shows and movies, I found the tidbits about Mark really interesting.
Why did the designers of UNI’s site invest so much energy in these profiles? One reason is that they knew users really needed this type of content to make a decision about where to attend college. Before deciding whether UNI is the school for them, prospective students visited the web site with one main goal – to see what other students had experienced.
At UIE, we coined the term “inukshuk” to describe the type of content in these UNI profiles. The term comes from the Inukshuk stone figures created by Inuit eskimos as guide markers. These figures signified to other hunters that others has already passed through and experienced their same journey. The main purpose of the inukshuk was to provide reassurance and empathy to others.
In our research, we’ve seen that, just like the Inuit hunters, users on the web want reassurance that others have shared their experience. In the case of UNI, the inukshuk content was very effective at offering the content users needed to make a decision about whether to attend the university.
You can find inukshuk content on many sites. It’s seen in web site discussion boards and testimonials, where users want to be informed through other users’ experiences. We’ve seen that inukshuk content is an invaluable way to share information with users.
August 31st, 2005 at 1:49 am
CoffeeCup Software is about to do this guys. We have over 14,000,000 users worldwide and have been around since 1996. We have been thinking of a way to make Web Design Software a more human experience and we will be rolling out something in the next week or so that is very similar. We asked users to send a picture and a comment about our software yesterday and we have already recieved 1,000 replies. Keep an eye out.
Nick-
August 31st, 2005 at 3:02 pm
Though the testimonials are good examples of Inukshuk content, I don’t think they would have helped me out if I was 18 years old and looking for a college to attend. I am 31 years old and those “Students” look at least 5 years older than me. On the other hand, it is northern Iowa.
August 31st, 2005 at 3:05 pm
Jeff,
Are you saying that 18-year-olds in Northern Iowa naturally look 5 years older?
August 31st, 2005 at 3:33 pm
Jeff,
I think you raise an interesting question. If users, for whatever reason, don’t relate to the inukshuk content, will it still work?
In our ongoing research, we want to examine ways authors can measure if their inukshuk content works effectively for users.
September 1st, 2005 at 10:04 am
Jared,
If those students in the pictures were 18, they look 16 years older than people who live in my state of NJ. But my stab at Iowa was basically saying it takes them 5 years longer to graduate high school. It was a bad joke about the mid west from an urban crusader.
Christine,
That is a great observation. It’s sort of like the new McDonalds campaigns. They are pushing “Fruit and Walnut” salads. I am fat and want something with cheese and more cheese. So I can’t relate. McDonalds should push Cheese Fries. Yummy, now that will get me in there.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:45 pm
Other than a couple of non-traditional students, all of them should fall in the 19-22 age range. We try to balance them by gender, ethnicity, in-state/out-of-state, etc., all roughly in proportion to the make-up of our student population, so they will appeal to a variety of prospective students. To me they look like college students I’ve seen all over the country. Perhaps they just look more mature to you because Iowa students are smarter than New Jersey students (Iowa students have higher average ACT scores than New Jersey students)… sorry, I couldn’t resist a friendly poke back at you, Jeff.
September 2nd, 2005 at 8:50 am
A well deserved poke that was. I feel like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. hehe.
October 30th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
As a director for a higher ed Web department, this part of the presentation was of great interest to me. I have seen this technique used on many sites over the years. We explored it a few years ago and I have been asked to look into it again.
I fall in the same group as Jeff in that this would not have helped me in selecting a College when I was 18. I believe there are prospective students that this would appeal to, but there is so much diversity in interest among them. How much information would be required in order to be effective, for example, is having one Music student enough to appeal to all prospective music students; or do you need several music students from various concentrations such as horns, voice, jazz, composing, etc? Will online diaries have a greater success on prospective students with interests in programs such as Music, Art, and Theatre and less success on those with an interest in Engineering, Management, CIS?
Also, once a working mix of content has been identified, what tools or business processes need to be in place to ensure the students keeping these online diaries are going to consistently write effective content? How would you assess the effectiveness? Asking a sampling of admitted students if the online diaries had an impact on their decision won’t tell you if the online diaries had a negative impact on any of the students that did not select your institution.