Thayer School of Engineering Website Redesign

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Thayer Schoolof Engineering Website Redesign

• Dartmouth Web Forum
• May 24, 2007

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Todays Agenda

• Redesign Goals
• Strategy
• Groundwork
• Information Architecture/Wireframe Design
• User Testing
• Visual Design
• Home Page Design
• Conclusion

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Redesign Goals

• Reorganize information and improve navigation
• Update design
• Prepare infrastructure to facilitate continuous
  improvement
• Better differentiate from competitor schools
• Accessibility
• Standards compliant (XHTML, CSS)
• Primary audience prospective students
  (undergraduate and graduate)

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Strategy project (2004)

• Project objectives from the XeniumGroup proposal
• Formalize business objectives for the redesign.
• Define preliminary expectations of each
  constituent group.
• Review and comment on project budgets. (Budgets
  will be developed by Thayer staff.)
• Define roles and responsibilities of staff,
  sponsors, and stakeholders.
• Define governance polices for project success.
• Design overall strategic plan for phased
  development.
• Review summaries of peer websites to determine
  best practices. (Summaries will be prepared by
  Thayer staff.)
• Review appropriate metrics for project
  milestones. (Preliminary metrics will be
  developed by Thayer staff.)
• Review and comment on milestone timelines for
  overall redesign project. (Timelines will be
  developed by Thayer staff.)

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Note This is not the final2007 budget matrix
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Market Research/Branding

• Cognitive Marketing, Rochester, NY
• Brand development and strategic marketing
  communications firm
• Clearly identify distinct, competitive,
  differentiating attributes
• In-person and telephone interviews
• Provide Thayer School with tools to increase
  effectiveness of communications

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Logo
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CMS Selection

• Talked to many people about what they use
• Seriously evaluated 2 systems - PivotCMS and
  OmniUpdate
• Created list of evaluation criteria
• Demos
• Selected PivotCMS, provided by XeniumGroup

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Redesign Team
Redesign Team

• Cognitive Marketing
• XeniumGroup
• Thayer School of Engineering

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FastFeedback Design/Build (1)

• Iterative design
• Constant tuning and tweaking
• Structure before surface
• Wireframes and proportions
• Greyscale only
• Bottom up
• Level three first
• Then level 2
• Then home page

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FastFeedback Design/Build (2)

• Start the CMS on day one
• Load existing content and start to massage it
• Re-organize sections/directories
• Rename pages for user-friendly URLs
• Build a structural Level 3 wireframe
• Define the edit regions
• Determine approximate proportions
• Right or left navigation, etc
• Integrate wireframes into CMS

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PivotCMS Outline View
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PivotCMS Edit View
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FastFeedback Design/Build (3)

• Use HTML text for navigation links
• Navigation will change, a lot, during design
• Allows you to experiment with the voice of labels
• Allows you to test different organizations of
  links
• User-test a browseable wireframe site with real
  content
• Users love thisthey can look for their own
  content
• You immediately see problems (i.e. sub-nav
  blindness)

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User Testing

• User observation task accomplishment
• 20 interviews
• On-site interview process
• Comments on draft designs
• Observation of user interaction with wireframe
  site
• Faculty

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Visual Design (1)
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Visual Design (2)
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Home Page Design (1)

• Last page to be designed
• Goals
• Exciting, innovative, serious, friendly,
  Dartmouth
• Primary audience aged 16-25, domestic and
  international
• Reflects currency and activity
• Welcome new visitor, engage returning visitor
• Constraints
• Fixed width
• Whole page visible without scrolling
• Navigation fixed on right
• News/events listings
• Rotating photos

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Home Page Design (2)

• Initial design
• Complicated collage
• Concerns about maintenance
• News items got lost
• 2nd design - better, but something missing
• 3rd design - combine concepts with best parts of
  2nd design

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Home Page Design (3)
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Design/Build Question

• If you provide tools which allow people to craft
  website content in parallel with the information
  architecture and visual design, how far will they
  go? How often will they use the tools? Is it
  worth it?
• Answer Yes, its worth it.

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August 3, 2006, through March 22, 2007

• 614 CMS logins.
• Created 94 sections (directories), 770 documents,
  and added 908 images. Added 93 files (pdfs, etc),
  and updated them 190 times.
• 177 image edits. 12,152 document edits (!).
• Real-time information architecture and navigation
  development
• Modified document monikers (filenames) 780 times
• Moved a document 316 times
• Moved a section 52 times
• Renamed a section 39 times
• Full site publish 123 times
• Published 1,679 individual documents
• 32 XHTML templates, updated 411 times for browser
  compatibility.

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Contact Info

• Alison FindonThayer School of EngineeringAlison.
  Findon_at_Dartmouth.EDU
• Michael YacavoneXeniumGroup, LLCmyacavone_at_xenium
  group.com