The Warner Web From the Ground Up: Project Management HighEdWeb Conference 2004

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The Warner Web From the Ground Up Project
Management HighEdWeb Conference 2004

• Aimee J. Lewis
• Warner School, University of Rochester

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Warners Old Web Site

• outdated design
• old content
• hard to navigate
• very little information (about 500 pages)
• the plan
• redo the site

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The Steps

• identify the task at hand
• what am I supposed to do?
• what is the scope of the project?
• who are the key players?
• research
• planning/strategy
• information architecture and content
• design
• implementation
• evaluation

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Research, Research, Research

• whether you have six months or two weeks,
  research
• institution
• audience
• competition
• limitations/assets

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Know Your Institution

• briefing meetings to result in creative briefs
• what is its mission? How does the administration
  see this being carried out?
• what insight can faculty/staff offer?
• at warner, had to start from the beginning.
  interviewed nearly 20 faculty/staff and 15
  current students to find out what is warner?

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Know Your Audience

• determine audience
• narrow it down to a group, even if broadly
  defined
• for warner, students prospective and current
• conduct focus groups
• understand their needs, expectations for content
  design
• for warner, 45 hours in focus group meetings with
  students, faculty, and alumni advisory boards
• create audience profiles
• narratives that you can share with others to make
  sure you understand the audience
• for warner, developed five
• create user scenarios
• helps to determine visitor experience and make
  sure your site is centered on the visitor
• for warner, created paths for audience profiles

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Know Your Competition

• benchmark
• who are your peers?
• at warner, national peers and local competition
• what are they doing on the web?
• is your technology up to par?
• what are common trends?

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Know Your Limits and Assets

• resources
• technology requirements
• guidelines, policies
• constraints/challenges
• warner challenges no internal designer, no
  institutional knowledge, no database capability,
  no staff, trying to overcome ivory tower image
• warner assets budget

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Planning/Strategy

• dont do it all on your own
• if possible, develop a working team to help you
• at warner, formed the web team, warner faculty
  and staff who had different responsibilities, and
  different knowledge levels of the web

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You Must Define Success
It must be measurable!
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You Must Define Success

• warner defined success as several things
• more applications
• new design, easier navigation
• sections for students, faculty, alumni, and
  friends
• increased traffic
• current content
• positive feedback from current students and
  faculty
• all within budget

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You Must Have a Deadline

• web sites should never stop progressing, but you
  need to agree upon an implementation date
• warner 6 months

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Develop Your Plan

• write up your
• direction, scope
• audience research (profiles, scenarios)
• production schedule
• pre-determined metrics for success
• share with others, revise as needed, get sign off

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Navigation and Content

• begin with a clear navigation
• determine content
• how can you meet audience needs? (forms, identity
  with university)
• make it easy to navigate dont lose great
  content in a hard-to-find navigation
• create wireframes
• conduct usability testing

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Design

• keywordsdescribe the tone and feel
• tell the things you know, i.e. we want to use the
  university colors
• agree upon a deadline
• share your research and outline goals hold
  briefing meetings with key individuals--but dont
  waste their time
• provide continuous input
• integrate into family of documents or existing
  identity
• remember best practices and guidelines/web
  standards
• if working with an external designer provide
  publications examples determine cost and services

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Getting to the Final Design

• create multiple design concepts and test with
  focus groups of faculty, staff, and students
• select a design
• collaborate with designer
• choose final photos and colors
• write text for top-level pages
• invite students and faculty to preview final
  design

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Implementation and Testing

• for warner
• coding and posting done in-house using
  Dreamweaver templates
• took three weeks to post and test

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Evaluation Why it Worked

• design
• clean, professional, approachable,
  thought-provoking (our keywords)
• the design complemented the content (academic,
  visionary)
• connected with audience and met their needs
• research resulted in an easy navigation and
  user-centric design
• targeted toward identified audiences
• home page photo
• invokes thought, what is this photo? spreading
  seeds of knowledge, growing
• ties in with university flowerimportant to
  alumni and students

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The Results

• doubled site traffic, consistently a top visited
  site on rochester.edu server
• increase of 60 in applications over one year,
  more than half apps downloaded from the web
• about 5000 pages of content and growing
• anecdotal
• focus groups gave high marks
• staff reported only 1/16 of the calls
• thousands under budget

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Conclusion

• successful web design is planned
• do your research
• create your plans, including setting measurable
  goals
• use what you learn to direct your site
  development
• evaluate
• aimee.lewis_at_rochester.edu