» Working through a simple addition of new content: a shuttle schedule
Just before heading out for vacation I was presented with what seemed to be a simple request: post a shuttle schedule on a website. In an effort to share what I do, and to get this written out so I can switch to vacation mode, I offer a view of how I work through where something should go online.
It starts simple
Scenario: the office of security hosts shuttle runs to the local airport and train station during the holidays. Where should we post the information?
To answer the question we need to come up with two lists:
- the short list: a list with ideally one item: the primary location
- the long list: a list with many items to cover where users will look for the information.
Primary location: the permalink
The short list contains the primary location. The primary location can serve as the permanent location (or permalink) for the information, and can also serve as the place we want folks to look again when they seek an updated version of the information. It should answer the question, “Where do we want them to look for it next time?” This also serves as the immediate place to post the content: post it here first, then develop the related links and posts to support it.
The secondary locations gets folks to the primary location
The long list contains secondary locations to support the primary location. This also serves to put the information where people will find it effectively. Each location can either contain a full copy of the information – in this case the shuttle schedule – or it can hold a teaser to point people to the primary location. Sometimes you just want to give them what they seek without extra effort (e.g. extra clicks.) In other cases you want them to know where the information lives.
Different locations warrant different types of links
For the shuttle schedule I might have different ways of posting the teaser: a simple link to the schedule, or I might turn the schedule into a feed so I can post the next scheduled time plus a link to the full schedule, or we could have the full schedule fed into another location entirely. There are many possibilities, so I also look at many factors to justify placement and how far we want to go—does it warrant the work involved.
A single source of content makes it possible
Whether you just post a link or post the full schedule itself, the information should have a single source. You do not want to copy and paste the information in multiple locations, and then have to update each of those locations manually when the information needs to be updated.
Investigate why the content is needed
In this particular example, the shuttle schedule was provided one week before Thanksgiving. It arrived in a simple request, “Please post this on the Security website.” I asked why (sometimes my greatest asset, often my downfall) and got an answer like, “Because, students are asking for it.” I asked what it related to – what else would be done to get the word out. “That’s it.” Well, there we have a problem.
Work through the challenge
It would be less than a week to get the word out to students, who were already making plans to get to the airport and the train station for the long weekend. It wasn’t enough time to get it into the search reliably (another problem we have to solve.) And the current student population likely wouldn’t look for it (there wasn’t a shuttle schedule for the week-long October recess, so why would there be one for the four-day weekend?) Instead of posting it online, I recommended an email to the students (as they’ve done in the past.) In the future we’ll have ways to push this kind of information to the students from the web, but to be honest the majority of students just aren’t going to see it in time in this case. Under our current practice this information gets emailed and that’s what the students will expect.
Find your starting point, get it posted, then work through how it can be improved.
If I wasn’t leaving for vacation (within the hour) I would have posted the schedule, along with some links to it on other sites, and highly recommended a broadcast email—pointing folks to the schedule online. Instead, the office emailed the schedule directly to the students, as they’ve done in the past.
When I return I’d like to return to this challenge. What we need to do is put together the proper solution, and do our best to provide a starting point in time to post and publicize the winter break schedule. There is a larger need for this content, and the solution we come up with can be built upon each time a there is a shuttle schedule. Given the academic calendar we should have seven opportunities each year to post not only the schedule, but also staged improvements. The schedule needs to be posted for arrival at the beginning of the fall semester, October recess, Thanksgiving recess, winter break, the arrival at the beginning of spring semester, spring recess, and the end of the academic year. That looks like something strong enough for some useful features. Now that we’ve looked a little further it seems strong enough to plan how to feed the schedule dynamically to many locations, and possibly set up ways the people who use the information can share it with each other.
As I was thinking about this after I left the office I saw this as something important to get down so I can remind myself and share how I think through web content. It often causes scope creep, which is something I’ve been working on, and happy to say I’ve improved on greatly (especially in the last year.) As I properly plan, and share the load, things happen much more smoothly. In the past I’ve concentrated so much on the infrastructure to support such ideas that the ideas themselves haven’t taken off.
For the shuttle schedule we’ll start slow – we’ll post the winter break schedule and the office can send an email pointing to it. But I can’t stop my brain from thinking an RSS feed of the schedule to share across sites, like Vassar Info, will be a good thing to add.