To the left is the average cover of carleton.edu between 1996 and 2020. We noticed that there was not a clear pattern– “Carleton” appears in three different places on the screen, for example. This indicates that the site has undergone many drastic changes just in the past 25 years. So, we broke this average down into multiples averages so that we could take a closer look at each change.
Here is the average cover across 1996-2007. It consists mostly of blue hyperlinks, with a few pictures here and there. Some of the blurriness you see is due to a design change that occurred in 1997, where the site went from just a few words and one picture on the entire homepage, to the design that you see on the right. This change could have been in response to the increasing traffic that began in 1996 as a result from an overall massive jump in the number of internet users.
Next, we made an average cover across 2008-2013. It looks very different from the previous one–it includes more colors, a menu bar, and a large picture in the center. Interestingly, the release of iPhones in 2007 brought about new challenges for website designers. For example, websites now needed to be accessible both on a small smartphone screen and a large computer screen. Carleton resolved this problem by moving all of the content of the homepage into a single column, so that it would then fill up the entire screen on a smartphone.
Finally, we have the average cover across 2014-2020. Pictures fill up the majority of the screen now, the content is very organized into tabs and menus, and both of Carleton’s school colors are in use–blue and maize yellow. Overall, the site is a lot more interactive and easier to navigate, compared to the early versions, making it more attractive for prospective students viewing the site.
