Hope for Arizona State University

Hope for Arizona State University

By: Kolton V.P.

                Hope4asu.org is a local website directed toward the students of Arizona State University, and connecting them to the hope community. Hope Christian Church is a non-denominational church, located in Neeb Hall on the Tempe campus, dedicated to bringing ASU students closer to God. Hope Christian Church also has a website called hope4asu.org that is used as another source for getting ASU students connected to the many events the church has to offer, as well as getting connected with the many clubs the church is involved with. Hope4asu.org is a well-organized website made to make college students at Arizona State University feel welcome to attend church services, as well as getting connected with community, and learning more about the gospel through many of the other events the church has.

                The website Hope4asu.org is a user-friendly site made to be easily navigable. The white text on a black background makes reading the text easy, and allows the users to find what they are searching for with ease. Being a fairly small website though, there really isn’t that much to choose from anyways. The top bar of the webpage has just five options, which for a small organization is fine since too many options would become confusing for the users, and make it more difficult to find the correct option. The top bar is also tinted with maroon, and has a dull gold font. This I believe helps show how the site is primarily addressing ASU students. While I prefer bright, vivid colors, the dullness of the gold font is subtle and polite. It makes it so that the website isn’t screaming at the users, especially when it comes to the tab that allows people to give money if they wish. I do not feel as if they would be getting many donations if the text on the website was screaming at the users to give to them, so the subtle color makes it more as if they are just politely asking users that if they feel led to give, to do so.

                Hope4asu.org is a very current site as well. Every week they have a new video up about what students on campus thought about the service. Each video is posted along the right side of the website, and remains there even when you navigate to a different part of the website. This helps encourage the users to watch the video, and the typically good feedback in every video posted on the sight encourages the people to come out and attend either the events offered, or the church services offered as well. And along with the weekly videos, the website also invites the users to join in on the conversations about what was discussed through the services through twitter. While I have never used twitter before, and do not plan to anytime soon, this can be really useful to any technology junkies out there who may be looking to get connected, or share their thoughts as well about the service. Along with twitter, Hope also has their own Facebook page where they post the weekly reaction videos, along with photos of the service, and many quotes that came from the service, as well as some of the bible verses that may have been discussed during the sermon, or verses having powerful meaning relating to the subjects discussed.

                Another aspect of the website that is really helpful with making students feel connected is the Real Sun Devil Stories. Hope4asu.org has filmed some of the members of the church sharing their personal stories with how God collided with their lives, and how they were able to get connected to Hope. Everybody has a story to tell, and these stories are usually very relatable. If a user does not feel like one of the stories was relatable to them, there are still tons of videos and stories to watch, and if they take the time to actually watch these videos, they will find one that truly is relatable to them. One downside to The Real Sun Devil Stories section of the website though would be how it is not the most organized. There are 2 columns full of videos to choose from, but no real way of knowing whose video you will be watching. The user would have to recognize the person in the picture on the video if they were looking for a certain person’s story to watch. But if the user had not previously been to Hope before, then they would just be watching random college kids stories. And even after going to hope for almost four months now, and becoming good friends with many of the students in the videos, it was still difficult to find some of the particular videos I wanted to watch. To say the least though, it is not difficult to navigate to the videos themselves since the user has the option to click on the Real Sun Devil Stories tab on the top bar of the webpage, or if they scroll down to the bottom of the webpage, no matter what section of the website the user is on, they have the option to watch a choice of three videos located at the very bottom of the webpage.

                Hope4asu.org’s home page gives some basic information about when and where church services will be, however when you click on the tab on the top bar that says “Times and Location,” it just gives you a small map of ASU campus with an x at the location where Neeb Hall is located. But this section of the site fails to tell you the times in which there are church services. While the homepage does tell the users the times of both church services, one might instead click on the “Times and Location” tab on the top bar before scrolling down on the homepage and finding the times for service there. The site does offer help with finding parking and directions, and allows you to click on a button to get that help, but really it just takes you to a Google map of ASU campus, and you have to figure out parking and directions on your own. And once you click the button that takes you to the Google maps, it directs the user away from the Hope4asu.org website. Personally, I hate it when I am on one site, and by clicking a button on that site I am suddenly on a whole different webpage. It makes me feel lost, and I’m sure it makes other users feel confused as well, and it becomes a hassle when you have to re-enter the webpage into the search engine and navigate all the way back to where you started.

                Another interesting aspect with the homepage of hope4asu.org is the rotating pictures near the top of the webpage. These pictures are the first thing the users are likely to notice when visiting the website. The one flaw if any about this aspect of the homepage would be that the pictures may rotate too quickly, and it may be tough to read all of the information on the pictures before it automatically rotates to the next picture. While the user does have the option to stop the pictures, it is not completely obvious. The cool thing about the pictures though is that they are ready for the users to click on, and it will navigate the user to a subsection of the website with more information about whatever picture they clicked on. While the users can typically navigate to these sub-pages by other means, clicking on the picture is easy, and can save a lot of time.  However one of the pictures within the rotation was not connected with the rest of the website. I was unable to get to the same page I was on when I clicked on the picture by using any of the other possible tabs. This picture is about one of the events coming up called Nightvision, and it is about how the ministry has been able to connect with the students on campus. This page was particularly interesting because of the list of all of the clubs and organizations the church is involved with in order to reach out to students. There are seven different clubs/organizations the church is involved with, and each has their own little section on the webpage explaining what the club/organization is all about. Each has just a small description, and then it tells you how to get involved, or get connected yourself.

                  Hope4asu.org is a great website for allowing students to get connected with the Hope community, and finding opportunities to learn more about God and the gospel. While the website may have some minor flaws, it is not completely distracting so that the users would not be able to find whatever they are looking for. The organization and simplicity of the site makes it easy for the users to navigate and become connected with Hope. Hope4asu.org is a great local website for connecting ASU students with some great clubs and organizations, as well as the hope community.