Royal+College+of+Art

= BENCHMARK ANALYSIS = ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART BRITTANY BANMAN

Description
The website www.rca.ac.uk is the homepage for The Royal College of Art, located in London. The College is one of the only wholly postgraduate colleges of art and design in the world. The website provides a comprehensive collection of information regarding all of the various programs offered at the college. The site would be used by students (current and prospective), alumni, faculty, administrators, and parents to find general information about the various colleges as well as specific information about courses, news, events, etc.

Analysis
Site Design: The website itself has a very structured grid, used to divide the site into thirds. The homepage devotes 2/3s to imagery and the remaining third to text. Once you navigate away from this page, the textual content occupies 2/3s while the imagery is only on third. This gives a nice balance to the site, keeping the visitor visually stimulated without making the information inaccessible. The site also uses imagery in an abstract way, using portions of images as aesthetic elements. When the user scrolls over a particular bar, the entire image is shown and then becomes a link to more content within the site. Another interesting aspect of the design is the slight variation of the imagery in the header. This keeps each page interesting while still remaining consistent.

Navigation/Information Architecture: The navigation on the site is static and unchanging. It is always located at the top of the webpage within the header next to the search bar and college logo. This is a typical location for navigation, making it intuitive for visitors to the site. The navigation divides the site into "Top level content choices" which appear at the top level of the information architecture. These content choices include admissions, courses & departments, about the RCA, news, exhibitions & events, etc. After selecting one of these options a new drop down menu appears, below the current one, on the new page with the next level of content relating to the selected topic. This ensures that the user can easily return to the previous page or navigate to content from the previous menu without redirecting. In terms of the organization of sub-categories of information, the site denotes news and events as the most important, featuring them on the homepage as a sort of running feed. The courses and departments page features links for each major, within which is information about the program, the handbook as a PDF, as well as a "useful links" section. Also, the site showcases facilities related to the programs with direct links from that page and a gallery of works.



Synthesis of Findings
Overall, the Royal College of Art website uses creative imagery to embody the atmosphere of the college and also as an interactive aesthetic element within the site. The layout is very intuitive, using appropriate levels of information architecture making it easy for users to navigate the site. The organization of the site in terms of design is accessible, logical and very structured. The site could be improved by breaking this structured grid in order to be more visually stimulating and perhaps use brighter colors. Aspects of this website can be useful in developing other websites through its organization of information and the location and organization of the navigation.