Welcome to the new Informatics website!

By carla [dot] bohme [at] ics [dot] lu [dot] se (Carla Böhme) - published 14 February 2024

Photograph of a laptop displaying our new website (swedish version). The title says "Study informatics" (translated).

Our new website is now published and available to visitors. What was our approach to building the new website?

After several months of rethinking, decluttering, updating and designing, we are now proud to present our new website. We had been using a very old LU interface under a separate URL, www.ics.lu.se, for a long time. In connection with the change of publication tool and the move to LUSEM's website, we have taken the opportunity to review all content and think fresh. Our focus has been on downsizing, language equality, accessibility, clear target groups, and coherence.

Downsizing

Since its first release, the information available on our website, and subsequently the number of pages, has steadily increased. Before switching to the new website, we had 150 different information pages in total on our Swedish and English sites (news and calendar events are not included in this figure). On our new website, the total number is 22, eleven in each language.

The downsizing is intended to help both visitors and administrators – it will be easier to find information, but also easier to keep the information updated and accurate. Because of this, we make extensive use of redirection to information available and updated on other parts of the LUSEM or LU web - mainly information common to several departments and/or faculties.

Language equality

Our English website used to have 40% more pages than our Swedish website. The information on the pages was often very different, and sometimes a tab would simply link to a page in the other language. With so many pages, the translation work was simply never finished.

The reason for this division had much to do with target audiences. Since we wanted to promote our research internationally, we prioritised English research-related texts over Swedish. This also affected educational information - for example, our Swedish courses could only be found on the Swedish website.

On our new website, the split is 50/50. All information is available in both Swedish and English (with a few carefully considered exceptions). It is important that the Swedish and English pages reflect each other as much as possible, both for reasons of equality and accessibility.

Screenshot of our old website. The interface is brown and looks aged. — This is what our website looked like before we switched to the new web solution.

Accessibility

A major focus has been on making the new pages as accessible as possible. We believe that all visitors, regardless of whether they have a disability or not, should be able to access the information on our pages. We have therefore been thorough in providing alternative texts to images, as well as making text and layout choices that will make it easier for screen readers to function properly. An important factor has been to avoid including text in languages other than the set main language of the page, i.e. not to mix languages.

For new and updated texts, plain language has been used as extensively as possible. Our ambition is that all people, with or without knowledge in our field, should be able to understand all the text and information presented on our pages. We have therefore tried not to unnecessarily complicate things!

Clear target audience

With our website, we primarily want to reach prospective students. Secondly, we of course also want to reach out to others who for various reasons are interested in our education and research – collaborative partners, the media, and other stakeholders.

Having a clear target group has helped us prioritise which information we want to highlight and show to the public. Thus, the focus has been on the "Study informatics" education tab, while other menu items have been merged or completely removed compared to our old web solution. For example, all information related to current students has been moved to Canvas.

Cohesion within LUSEM and LU

As you may have noticed, it is not only our website that has been updated. All departments and divisions within LUSEM have moved to the new publishing tool Drupal, and have thus participated in this major web project. This will lead to a great improvement in cohesion between the pages at the faculty level, but also partly at the LU level, as several parts of the university already use Drupal. It contributes to a similar layout and appearance for the entire organisation, which will hopefully make it easier for visitors to navigate and find the information they are looking for.