Out of the many design patterns, one that falls to both side of visual design as well as content hierarchy is "Titled sections"
What it does ?
It allows user to Skim Content. Jump Hop Skip over content before zeroing onto the section they feel will give them the information, the purpose of visiting the site.
As a quick exercise, i stitched an alternate structure, which assumed the primary function is to allow prospective Students to view programs. Note since this is a big university they also invite tenders regularly and post Jobs.
Apart from this, there is information about Board of directors and some other boring stuff, not relevant to students but maybe to other stakeholders like Alumni, companies, potential investors and someone in the ministry who needs to ensure his lovely mugshot is not missing.
Another interesting concept that ties to this is 'Information Scent'
This means that the Title is named such that it gives us a good hint of what would be inside it, so that the user can quickly go a level deep and find what it was looking.
Current Web presence for IIT, Delhi
Keeping the needs of prospective students at top, rest have been moved around. Also the cluttered two black parallel strips of links in above image have been taken off from top and the space kept exclusively for the branding of the engineering institute.
IIT, is one the most premier institutes of engineering in India(also ranked high globally) and its name deserves that whitespace.
This is an exercise purely to showcase how simple change in structure and using Title Sections, helps your user find the content they need. A step in right direction early in design.
If you would like to share you view, please drop in a comment
Appreciate the post, if you learnt something from it :)
