Middlebury Web Makeover

A PRESENT FROM WHITE WHALE

During the WorkSessions, we have heard questions like “What should go in a sidebar?” and “Is this something that should go in the Carousel?” To help us answer these questions, White Whale has provided us with a content guide, and they have turned it into a VISUAL.  Attached is a content guide that will help you answer some of these questions, and make choices as to the types of content that can be displayed in different locations on the page, and will help us, as a community, to create a consistent look-and-feel throughout the site.

Thank you Janie and Tonya for putting this together!

CHECK-IN REMINDER

Thank you to everyone who has already filled out the check-in form. We have heard from some but not everyone, so this is a reminder to fill out the form so that we can make an informed decision before Thanksgiving break.

http://blogs.middlebury.edu/webredo/your-ideas/web-makeover-check-in/

WHAT WILL YOUR VISITOR”S DO?

December 15th is right around the corner.  Between this date and the launch, we will be looking at the site to see if we have made an intuitive, useful resource for our community.  We have already heard questions like “Where is the link to WebMail?” and “How do I find Faculty Office hours?”  What we would like to hear from you is how people use YOUR site.  What information do they need to find?  How will it be used?

We have created another simple form, where you would chose the constituent (or add one) and write a task that a visitor would need to complete.  We’ll gather these and incorporate them into the user testing.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dEZ5Nk8wbEZrYWt3T0xUaUdqQzF0MlE6MA

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Per Mike’s last post on the “glass wall” phase of feedback, we are offering links to design mock-ups for three academic departments and a faculty profile. A few notes on these:

These designs are not supposed to mirror actual content or the specific links and menu items that a department might use. White Whale did model it using real content, but making the specific content and menu decisions will be up to each department. Instead, the designs represent a range of options that a department/program might choose from, including different color palettes and navigational tools. Even the three departments used as samples might choose completely different options. And these are just flat images, not actively linking sites.

The three departments represent a range of possible design set-ups. The Chemistry site is the most bare-bones in terms of interactive tools – see the bottom of the page for an area called “the carousel,” a horizontally-scrolling content area that can be updated regularly with upcoming events, announcements, stories or links. The Economics page adds a top navigation nicknamed “the juice bar,” with tabs for updating content. The Film & Media Culture page uses both the top and bottom interactive navigation, and highlights how you might embed video into the pages. There are also various other boxes that can be used in all the designs for highlighting announcements, events, deadlines, or any other updates.

The faculty profile page (thanks to Nick Muller for being the prototype!) shows how faculty might display information. We’ll be adding areas for Recent Accomplishments (publications, awards, grants, etc.) and the ability to embed a feed from another site (like a faculty blog). We will also be basing a staff profile based on this template.

Please look these over and leave comments below – again, we’re not looking for “I love/hate it!” style comments, as much as hoping you might pose useful questions about what might be left out, what functionality you might want that’s not clearly here, etc. Every department and faculty/staff member will have some control on how their sites appear, but it will be based on the options here, so hopefully this will be useful as you work forward in adding content into Drupal and helping to build the site in the coming months!

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We’re entering a frantic phase of the web makeover process where each week we will be receiving sets of designs from our design partner, and quickly reviewing them, making suggestions, and ultimately approving them. Throughout this project, we have tried to be as inclusive and transparent as we possibly can, in the belief that by including the community in the process, the end result will be better. At this stage, we have to shift this approach somewhat in order to move the process along at a reasonable pace. To that end, we will continue to post proposed designs to the project blog, and to be open to comments on those designs. We will however only offer very short windows where feedback can be incorporated into our feedback to our design firm, and in some cases, we may only have time to read and react to feedback after the designs have been approved. In those cases, we may be able to tweak the approved designs as we convert those designs into actual web pages. We liken this process to what you may have observed at a TV show or at the Ben & Jerry Ice Cream Factory.  There is a glass wall where you can see what’s going on, but your voice in the process is muffled by the glass wall that allows the TV show or the ice cream makers to do their work without interruption or distraction. A central tenet of our project has been that getting the new site launched on a new web authoring platform is the beginning, not the end, and so while we are somewhat dismayed that our ambitious schedule is forcing us to be slightly less inclusive during this phase, we also find solace in knowing that the site will continue to grow and evolve to meet the needs of our community.

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The following is White Whale’s live presentation during their visit, where they share the next round of designs for the Middlebury Web site.

Below are two moc-ups for Section Homepages that were presented in the video:

Section Page: Admissions
Section Page: Arts

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing designs from White Whale that bring us further into the site. Please continue to share your comments here, on the blog.

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Jakob Nielsen, a key figure in web usability has 113 guidelines for homepage usability. I was asked to use the guidelines to assess our new homepage design. The following is a list of what I considered to be the most important guidelines along with whether or not the new design follows them, and some occasional comments.

Middlebury Homepage Usability Guidelines

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A couple weeks ago, we created a survey to be taken by people on campus tours to determine how they use the current website in an effort to improve their experience on the new site.  In just one week, we had 184 responses.  Some of the results are listed below, and are relative to the number of people who responded to each question.  Note: some percentages may not sum to 100% due to rounding.

The actual survey.

Of the 184 responses, there were:
132 (72%) prospective students
51 (28%) parents
1 (<1%) other relative

They were asked if they have visited the site: never, a few times, frequently, or other.
22 (12%) had never visited the site
15 (8%) specified they had only visited once or twice
129 (70%) visited a few times
18 (10%) were frequent visitors

They were asked to rank in order of importance (1 being most important) the following categories: admission requirements, financial aid, academics, athletics, arts, student life, campus, and events (relative ranks based on results in parentheses).
Admission Requirements (2):
30 (18%) did not find this information important
2.85 average ranking of those who did find it important.
Financial Aid (7):
83 (49%) did not find this information important
5.14 average ranking of those who did find it important.
Academics (1):
25 (15%) did not find this information important
2.00 average ranking of those who did find it important.
Athletics (5):
48 (28%) did not find this information important
4.20 average ranking of those who did find it important.
Arts (6):
74 (43%) did not find this information important
5.03 average ranking of those who did find it important.
Student Life (3):
46 (27%) did not find this information important
3.32 average ranking of those who did find it important.
Campus (4):
63 (37%) did not find this information important
3.80 average ranking of those who did find it important.
Events (8):
86 (50%) did not find this information important
6.08 average ranking of those who did find it important.

Further, 21 (13%) cared about other information, most notably information on tours, visiting, and directions.

They were next asked to rate how easily they found the information they wanted (1-hardest to 10-easiest)
7.66 average ranking

They were asked to classify the length of their average visit as: a few minutes, 10-15 minutes, 30-6- minutes, or over an hour.
50 (32%) said a few minutes
89 (57%) said 10-15 minutes
17 (11%) said 30-60 minutes
1 (<1%) said over an hour

They were given 4 adjectives (enjoyable, useful, nondescript, frustrating) and asked to check all that described their experience with the website.
39 (26%) said enjoyable
135 (89%) said useful
16 (11%) said nondescript
3 (2%) said frustrating

They were asked if they had taken the virtual campus tour.
14 (8%) had taken the virtual tour

Those who had not taken the virtual tour were asked if they might have if they knew it existed.
89 (59%) said yes

Lastly, they were asked if they would join Middlebury social networks such as Facebook or following on Twitter.
46 (28%) said yes.

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One aspect of the web makeover that we’ve heard is quite desired – and that we’ve always included in our plan – is the creation of personalized and customized pages. Over the last few months, it’s become clear that these terms, along with others like portals, homepages, profiles, and the like, can mean differing things depending on context. So in the interest of sharing a common vocabulary, we’ve developed a brief glossary of four different ways that the new site will support personal and custom information:

Portal: a personalized & customized user page for interacting with Middlebury.edu. This will not be published for others to see, but rather an interface you can make to choose the links, feeds, updates, and other information from Middlebury and other sites that you want to easily access. It will be comparable to iGoogle, MyYahoo, etc., but we will not be able to have it structured around widget in first iteration launching in January – implementing a widget-based system will be part of the next phase of development.

Directory Listing: the public presentation of data coming from Banner (department, address, email, phone, office hours, photo, etc.). You cannot edit this material on the web directly, but can update your information within Banner, including adding a link to your profile or personal website. This information will be accessed through the online directory search, and departmental sites can pull staff/faculty info from the directory.

Profile: the public presentation of your information, fully customized and editable by you. You can include feeds, images, video, links (internal & external), and other assorted content. There will be templates for defaults by classification (faculty, staff, student, etc.), with limited design flexibility. Your profile can feed from other dynamic systems – faculty pulling current course offerings, links to recent publications or documents, calendar of relevant events, etc. For most members of the Middlebury community, your profile will be the place to present yourself to the world.

Personal Website: anyone can build and maintain their own website independent of the core Middlebury.edu design and information architecture. Many people already do this, using tools like Segue, WordPress, HTML, or other platforms. LIS Web Services will support building such sites on WordPress and other currently supported platforms (including Segue in the short-term). Anyone can choose to link to their personal website via their directory and/or profile.

Hopefully this clarifies what options will be available for individuals. Please post any questions and comments as we work to implement these features.

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The new MIIS web site is nearing readiness for its official launch. After consultation with the web team at Middlebury, we are planning the formal launch of the new MIIS website for September 15.

Dozens of people have worked very hard all summer to develop a framework  for the site that reflects our mission and vision for the future.  A special thanks to Kristen Byers, Lynn McDonald, and all the members of the web strategy team who have worked to assemble our core content, and our colleagues at Middlebury who have worked tirelessly to translate White Whale’s designs into working templates.

There will be a  ”soft” launch (providing members of the community with access to the unpublished site) on September 1, to allow an opportunity to become familiar with the site and identify any errors, bugs or other issues. Please watch MIIS@work for instructions on connecting to the site on September 1, and for ways that you can add your voice to the site in the future.

A web site is a dynamic, ever-changing network of information and interactions, so don’t expect to see a “finished product” on September 1, or at any time in the future.  In fact, we ask for your participation in ensuring that the web site is never “finished” — but that it is alive with an ever-growing  collection of current and engaging stories.

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We’ve let White Whale Web Services know that they should proceed refining and improving upon the initial design concept that they presented to us earlier this month. While we share many of the concerns that were expressed via the blog, at the presentation, and in private conversations, we believe that the fundamental concept, once improved upon,  will allow us to accomplish the many, and at times competing, goals of our project.

Here are some of the core issues that we asked them to grapple with in their revision, and in building out designs for the rest of the site.

Quick Access to information

The web site is used by faculty, staff and students as a source of information for daily activities.  Information needs to be easy to find.  Quick links and personal web sites have been proposed as solutions, and as the working models and technologies for these features are being developed, we will need to have user testing to see that they meet the need. Stay tuned for chances to help us make sure that this goal is met.

Pictures of Vermont and the Middlebury Campus

One of the features that attracts new students to Middlebury is the stunning landscape and beautiful campus.  The bookshelf, the multi-colored line design that dominates the home page (also known as the equalizer, or the sticks!) will allow for pictures of the landscape to be co-mingled with stories of academic and social activities, allowing the visitor to find images and other media that represent everything that makes Middlebury a wonderful environment to teach, study, and work. We have also been promised that photography of buildings, people, and landscapes will dominate the second level pages. In addition, we are considering a ‘Middlebury in pictures’ slideshow for those who really, really want images to convey the important sense of place.

The Design Does Not Represent Middlebury

When people see the design for the first time, there seems to be a collective “hunh?”. Is this a College website or the website of a design firm? Is it a college that focuses on design? Part of the problem is that the model that White Whale presented is not yet built using the sort of technology that will allow the visitor to more quickly understand where they have landed. Once built, we believe that as the stories open and a visitor begins to explore , she will warm to the design and understand how this interface can represent a snapshot of life at Middlebury.  What occupies our minds and hearts is expressed through the stories, and a visitor, over time, will understand what makes Middlebury such a wonderful place. The challenge, not unique to this design, is how to capture in a single image the richness and complexity of our multi-faceted institution. We should also note that many people have expressed concern that the home page says Middlebury and not Middlebury College. The decision to omit “College” from the website was made before the webmakeover project, and we won’t be adding it back at this moment in time.

Please note that this is not the end of the design process.  It is a point that commits us to a particular direction, but still affords many opportunities for refinement, enhancement, and improvement. We were thrilled to receive over 120 comments on our blog, dozens of private emails, and to have countless hallway conversations about these designs, and that there was a general although not by any means universal sense of enthusiasm for the direction we are taking. That said, in any open process, there are going to be disagreements and differences of opinion. We have and will continue to factor in a wide range of voices throughout this process. These voices include:

1. feedback from the blog and feedback sent to us via email and via chat
2. the professional judgment of our design and information architecture team, and of white whale
3. the goals of the project as articulated in our RFP, the internet strategy taskforce report, and our analysis of the survey results
4. feedback and guidance from the senior administration that understand the goals and directions of the College

In addition, we also have certain constraints that we are working under:

1. our content management system and limited programming resources for customization
2. the scope of our contract with White Whale
3. the amount of time we have until we launch in January

As we enter this next phase, there will be ample opportunity for the community to remain engaged in the process. These include:

1. providing feedback on the soon-to-be-released designs for the second level pages.
2. providing feedback on the proposed information architecture
3. helping to decide what should be included as Quick Links
4. participating in usability testing and focus groups

We will be having another public presentation in late September, and as always, the blog and the facebook group are open for comments and questions.

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