Redesigning InfoPath:

1
Redesigning InfoPath

• A Case Study of Web Site Organization and
  Dynamic Page Building

2
Outline

• History
• Goals
• Methodology
• Technology
• Future enhancements
• Discussion

3
History

InfoPath InfoPath, The
UC San Diego Information System 1UC San
Diego - choose for ALL campus resources
Shortcuts to SELECTED campus resources
2Academic Departments
3Administrative Resources 4UC San
Diego in Pictures 5Library - choose for
ALL library resources Shortcuts to
SELECTED library resources 6Roger
- UC San Diego Library Catalog
7Melvyl - University of California Library
Catalog 8Reference Shelf
9Britannica Online 10San Diego
11World - Internet Resources
12News and 13Weather 14About
InfoPath 15What's New (November 22,
1994) Commands Use arrow keys to move, '?' for
help, 'q' to quit, 'Up and Down to move. Right to follow a link Left
to go back. H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain
screen Q)uit /search deletehistory list

• Telnet version 1989
• gopher version 1993
• Web version 1994
• official UCSD web site
• Redesigned 1995

4
InfoPath circa 1995
5
Why Change?

• Hard to update
• imagemap
• No place for announcements
• stopgap measure URL at bottom of page
• Large image map
• slow to load, problem for text-only browsers
• Growth of campus web resources
• Old interface reflects web resources on campus in
  1995

6
Goals

• Easy to update
• dynamic page building, administration tools
• News areas
• quick and easy to add and delete, can be
  responsive to campus needs
• Easier to find web sites
• new and better index, more options
• Covers all of UCSD
• School of Medicine, Healthcare, Extension

7
Methodology

• Form redesign team
• Focus groups
• Develop specifications - cross platform,
  versions, web safe colors
• Do drafts
• Review groups
• Final draft
• Implementation

8
Redesign Team

• Janet Tait - facilitator, manager
• Brian Tingle - programmer, webmaster
• Susan Jurist - graphic design
• Chris Frymann - interface expertise

9
Focus groups

• Why?
• Pros and Cons
• Groups
• Student affairs
• Marketing Council
• webmasters
• student users
• staff faculty

10
Specifications

• Areas focusing on needs of different user groups
• Expansion of Index
• Cross-platform, cross-browser
• Web safe colors
• Aim for Netscape 4 but work with 3

11
Drafts
12
Review Groups

• Faculty staff
• Students
• Former InfoPath Advisory Council members
• and, of course, our boss.

13
Final site
14
InfoPath today

• Index and Department applications
• Administration tools
• Focused Intranets
• News areas
• Quick Links

15
Technology

• Foundation of dynamic pages
• Little perl hacks
• HTML

16
Foundation of dynamic pages

• Web server Netscape Enterprise Server
• Programming Javascript
• Relational database Sybase

17
Little Perl Hacks

• Alta Vista
• Pictures
• Quick Links

18
HTML

• Style sheets
• Javascript
• Browser support - cross platform testing

19
Future Enhancements

• Search tools
• metadata
• news items
• web registry
• web policy

20
Discussion

• Goodies
• w3.ucsd.edu/tingle/goodies.html
• Presentation orpheus.ucsd.edu/jtait/dctug