Industrial Design Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 58 industrial design schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 52 industrial design schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 94% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 67.2% of the 58 industrial design schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 13.8% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Black (8.6%), yellow (6.9%) and red (1.7%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on industrial design school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest industrial design schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%
3. University of Washington - Seattle Campus: white 11% and grey 1.7%

Font

The largest number, nearly 41.4%, of industrial design school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on industrial design school websites include Verdana (27.6%) and Helvetica (8.6%).

The largest industrial design school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica
3. University of Washington - Seattle Campus: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 39 industrial design schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 844 YouTube channel subscribers. The industrial design schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
2. The New School: 2,231 subscribers
3. Auburn University: 2,016 subscribers

Exactly 43 industrial design schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 4,257 Twitter account followers. The industrial design schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: 18,232 followers
3. Auburn University: 17,795 followers

Web Metrics

Although all industrial design schools have websites, only about 18% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 82.8% of industrial design school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The industrial design schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Ohio State University - Main Campus: 915 broken links
2. University of Washington - Seattle Campus: 535 broken links
3. Savannah College of Art and Design: 468 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on industrial design school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The industrial design school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Montclair State University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Appalachian State University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. University of Illinois at Chicago: 2 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The industrial design school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. The Art Institute of Colorado: 138 HTML validation errors; 67 CSS validation errors
2. The Art Institute of Pittsburgh: 136 HTML validation errors; 67 CSS validation errors
3. The Art Institute of Seattle: 133 HTML validation errors; 67 CSS validation errors