MeggBrown.com

Anthony Dunn, WCMS Coordinator, CSU, Chico. “Maybe the Purpose of Our Redesign is Only to Serve as a Warning to Others.” Disclaimer posted at the start. For entertainment purposes only.

• Current IA: 11/2009
• Current design: 4/2004

Establish a web governance structure

• The 21st century: we’ll get there — eventually
• Org charts: was this really necessary?

• Cabinet Level
  • Web Management Committee
  • Web Content Committee
    • Web Design Team

• Academic politics: their visciousness is only matched by the insignificance of the stakes
• Engagement: Not as interesting as watching “Cops”

Create a competent and sufficient team

• Web nerds:
  • having a team of web nerds alone wasn’t going to cut it
• Web team: you wish

Define the project

• Your problem: No, it’s not a blown RT-237 Vacuum tube. Trust me on this.
  • The problem with the site that it was old
• Scope Creep: We started out to redesign our homepage. and, well…
• Bright ideas: too many of them gives me a headache
  • Got stuck in a loop of brainstorming. Needed to say “enough, let’s move on and get going with the project”
• The journey: Of a thousand miles often ends in a mud hole
  • No deadlines, definition will cause your project to get bogged down
• Our budget: Arnold terminated it
  • Caused us to focus on what we can do in the time we have

Do the research

Can’t fix a problem if you don’t know what’s broken

This phase was less useful that he thought it would be

• Google Analytics: telling you wahat you already knew since 200x
• Data Visualization: because sometimes pictures are all people can understand
  • crazyegg; the single most important image
• User surveys: it helps when they understand the questions
  • What do you like most about our website? That you have it. OK, fair point.
• Learning from other people’s mistakes: actually, we already knew…
• Research: people will believe anything you say if they think you’ve done the research
  • if you do the research it’ll help pave the way to get through the politics
• Our budget: now he’s hacking away at it with a sword!
  • The budget was the biggest constraint. Additional cuts made it impossible to do all the research they wanted to do.
• Focus groups: sometimes the body language tells you all you need to know
• Stakeholders: there’s a lot of them and they’re mostly angry. But, hey, at least they’re wearing our campus colors.
  • The pages they were creating had to be a central clearing house of information and serve as a gateway to get people of all perspectives to the information they seek
• Our budget: Aw geez! Now he’s got a big gun!

Content

• Content: UR doin it wrong (construction sign)
• Information Architecture: yeah, anybody can do this
• Wireframe: if I have to look at another one of these I’m going on a killing spree
• Your content: some assembly required
• Our content: it’s being driven by the PR department
  • students and prospective students hate marketing; they can sniff that out and they hate it
• Our budget: Now he’s invited all of his friends!
  • Really had to cut down a lot of the content we hoped to have
• Your WCMS: it won’t do your job for you
  • someone has to write that content — someone needs to create it
• Web design: just because you wear a suit doesn’t mean you’re qualified to critique a web design
  • The research helped them get through the approval quickly
• Frameworks: I think we should have done this first learn from this mistake
• Our budget: tired of hearing about it yet?
  • It’s made us focus on what is do-able

Takeaways

• Get buy-in and high-level ownership
• Make sure you have the right people on your team
• Clearly define the project and it’s scope
• Do the research
• Get input, feedback, and buy-in
• Have a content strategy and a plan for your content

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.