Comments on: MIT’s Homepage: Preposterous or Ingenious?

By: blockquote

blockquote — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:12:54 +0000

The ever changing homepage…

MIT changes its homepage picture and color every day. Jarred Spool Joshua Porter writes about it as an example of his “current knowledge” concept.
……

By: DeWayne Purdy

DeWayne Purdy — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 18:47:26 +0000

I forwarded the post to the University web developer’s listserv, and found the responses interesting… Many of the comments were similar to Adam’s… Because MIT=innovation, MIT can get away with this where many could not… it matches their brand. The resources involved are another issue, I don’t think we could do it with the resources I have to do the web site at my university. One post brought up an interesting CSS Zen Garden correlation… here’s the code and CSS, design and submit a home page idea. Pretty radical when you consider the extent most web developers like to have total control over the look of their pages.

By: Chris Cavallucci

Chris Cavallucci — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 15:23:36 +0000

I think it’s a risky but ingenious move. So, exactly who are MIT’s customers? I would think their user community is fairly broad: current and prospective students, faculty, staff, alums, associates, vendors, etc. That’s probably a significant number of people. The fresh content on the home page will strengthen the community and ’stickiness’ of the site for these people who already have a relationship with the university.

Also, this tag in the source may force the search bots to recrawl the site more frequently:
meta http-equiv=”Expires” content=”12 January 2006″
That’s certainly an added benefit.

By: BIG SWINGING

BIG SWINGING — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:23:42 +0000

Ingenious and a great idea for anyone to try.

If yer customers don’t like it, kill it and revert back to the old design.

The answer to what works best always lies in the marketplace with actual customers and prospects. The problem is that some marketers and designers have the propensity to think they “know better” than their customers.

As much as the smartest marketers and the most talented designers hate to admit, actual customers in actual situations are the only people that have all of the right answers all the time.

By: Bill Damon

Bill Damon — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 01:14:39 +0000

At first I thought I was on the wrong site. That has to be somewhat of a problem when trying to start a relationship with the user. And if it wasn’t MIT I think I would probably run for fear of them being hacked and having a fake site in their place.

By: Brady Joslin

Brady Joslin — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 23:52:14 +0000

Interesting when accounting for site “interestingness” and may work for their audience. I wouldn’t recommend others trying to replicate.

By: DeWayne Purdy

DeWayne Purdy — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 23:29:16 +0000

The coordination and design on daily changes is what really amazes me, that’s a lot of work. Their office is right across the street from the Cambridge Marriott, maybe you should invite them to speak at UI 11! They’ve been doing it for several years, it would be interesting to get their thoughts on the reaction to the daily changes, the process they go through, and the benefits they feel they receive from it.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 20:16:01 +0000

A school like MIT can do something like this, but a smaller school cannot. When I think of MIT, I think of a ground breaking school that constantly pushes the envelope. To me, it would seem more hokey coming from a smaller, lesser known institution.

By: Nataly

Nataly — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 14:51:55 +0000

Very original site! But too heavy… Those who use dial-up will have a lot of problems!

By: Joefish

Joefish — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:42:47 +0000

How about somewhere in between?

I really like the idea, it’s certainly a refreshing take on things. I can see how this would work for someone like them, who have a large amount of content available, and where their users quite possibly take a look at the site just to see what’s there, or, they visit with a specific task in mind, but it’s ok if they get a little distracted.

This approach probably wouldn’t work as well for someone with a small amount of content, because the user would be confused about why the homepage has changed. I think it would also be detrimental to sites where the user would visit with one specific purpose in mind. For example, when I visit the homepage of my country’s Inland Revenue Department (ird.got.nz), I go there with a specific purpose, and distracting me in any way would not be productive.

Just the thoughts off the top of my head…