Question #3

3. Take a look at St. Clair Colleges website. In relation to visuals, what would you propose to St. Clair College to improve/enhance this new website to effectively market to potential incoming local domestic students. Please provide three (3) recommendations and justify your answer with detailed reasoning. (9 Marks) 

If we are talking about main page of St. Clair website, I would like to provide certain changes if we talk about visual part of website.  

Change #1 – change quality of picture 

 (in my opinion this image (with dog) is not so good quality. 

Reason and justification from power point  

Why we must do it 

W9 –C – “Importance of visuals” slide 18 

Take note: Incorrect use of visuals can also deter consumers  

Poor quality images that are pixelated, low-resolution, over-compressed, or badly resized. 

For example, I am a consumer who visited St. Clair website and saw this bad quality picture, what is also unproperly cropped, it would lead to a dissonance if I had been the person who relied most on visual elements in learning information. This could produce a negative effect on the first impression about college, perhaps people who developed website did work hard or simply did not pay attention to details, but price for this could be loss of potential student who could be a part of St. Clair family and pay for courses.  

Change #2 – change picture (content of picture). 

Reason and justification from power point  

Why we must do it 

W9 –C – “Importance of visuals” slide 11 

Visuals have been found to improve learning by up to 400 percent. 

Also, they affect learners on a cognitive level and stimulate imagination, therefore, enabling users 

to process the information faster. 

Stanford University’s Robert E. Horn, explained this relationship clearly: 

“When words and visual elements are closely entwined, we create something new and we 

augment our communal intelligence … visual language has the potential for increasing ‘human 

bandwidth’—the capacity to take in, comprehend, and more efficiently synthesize large amounts of 

new information.” 

Based on the details provided we can see that the combination of correct image(s) and text play important roles in creating an overall impression of the college.  

In my opinion the current image does not perform its function.  

Most likely this dog is a symbol of the college but If I am a person who visits a website for the first time, I will probably not immediately understand the message of the picture. This picture with dog does not immediately say that this is a website of college where students’ study.  

 In addition, the dog on the picture merges with the background, which makes the “readability” of picture more difficult. 

If I had the opportunity to change the picture, I would choose a good quality image with students.  

Can be like this  

Why would I use this picture: 

• Young people with books are representation of students and students’ life 

• All attention on people they do not merge with background  

• Students show positive emotions that can be a base for emotional trigger (human factor, people will go to place where other people are happy). 

Change #3 use more pictures with emotional trigger, make it bigger and more clear  

Reason and justification from power point  

Why we must do it 

W9 –C – “Importance of visuals” slide 14 

Visuals cause a faster and stronger reaction than words. 

They help users engage with the content, and such emotional reactions influence information 

retention. 

This is because the visual memory is encoded in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, the same 

place where emotions are processed. 

The brain is set up in a way that visual stimuli and emotional response is easily linked, and together 

the two form memories. 

Negative visual depictions are particularly useful for leaving a strong emotional impression. 

For example, we have this headline (article), and I think we could use another picture to represent the main idea of article and create stronger emotional connection.  

First thing that I would change of course it’s size of image; I would make it bigger  

Removed black cover of the photo to make it more “readable” 

Second replace image, it could be clearer picture where people participate in a process and show their emotions during mock pharmacy robbery 

(I created it with use of GPT to show idea) 

One of the students can be a “robber” and other students can wear white robes and play a role for the picture.  

It may increase interest in the article, and you might want to know more details.