Recently, Davidson has redesigned The Crier, the daily e-mail to all students detailing the daily events at Davidson. Also, just this past Monday, Davidson redesigned their main website. But is change for the better?
Starting with the Crier, the new Crier presents itself as a cluttered, hard to read mess that provides less information in a harder to read format, especially on an iPhone or other mobile device, which is where most people probably read The Crier when it comes in. So let's run through the changes, and make sure that they actually convey information students want to see in a more efficient way.
The new Crier starts its presentation with a summary of today's events in one line in a table, listing the time, event name, and location. Some of these are unnecessary: such as table assignments for student organizations fundraising on campus. In theory, the system is designed to have users click on events that they are interested in to find more information on the event. However, using this Monday's Crier as an example, if I wanted to know what "Table for Phi Delta" involved, I would be brought to a confusing page that simply told me, "Promotional Event." I could've told you that.
Another example off of this Monday's Crier was "Davidson Community Entrepreneurial Fund." I think this is something I might be interested in, but is this just a recurring club meeting, or is it an informational meeting to get involved in Entrepreneurship at Davidson? Clicking on the link, however, gives me nothing but "Meeting" and a contact e-mail address. I just rolled out of bed; I'll forget to send an e-mail asking about it by the time I'm out of the shower.
Picking a random Crier from the fifth week of last semester shows me fewer events, but provided me with more information on the event. Also, it didn't show me information on tables doing fundraisers, which I would see regardless when walking into the Union, and everything was explained to me in the same e-mail. It was convenient.
Thankfully, the General Announcements and Deadlines haven't changed that much, but have you seen Upcoming Events? The old Crier e-mail did the same thing for "Upcoming Events" as it did for "Today's Events." This is where the new Crier becomes worse. The new Crier shows 75 upcoming events in small type, sans description. A similar Crier from September shows twenty-four. I doubt there are triple the number of events this week as there were on a given week last semester, but let's look at the events. Some are irrelevant to students: staff forum, an employee event, or Chidsey Leadership Fellows Meeting, a private meeting.
Other events are repeated many times: Girl Talk Dress Drive (again with no description) appears five times in the new Crier, and so does Ticket Sales for Green Ball (this sounds like fun, I wonder where I can find more info since it's not at the link?).
Long story short and all the ranting aside, The Crier is an important piece of communicating to all the students of Davidson College. It must present relevant student events to the whole student body, and things such as table reservations and private or limited-interest meetings must not clutter it. In the new Crier, it is hard to sort the relevant from the irrelevant, and to find out more about events I may be interested in.
I am all for change, but change must be for an improvement, not simply for the sake of change. The new Crier was launched too soon and lacks the functionality necessary to fill the necessary role of the Crier. It can certainly be improved, and it must be.
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