Interview: Center for Cognitive Sciences Web site redesign

This is the fourth in a several-part series of interviews with communicators who have redesigned or updated their Web sites with the University templates. If you have redesigned your site or have a site to suggest for these interviews, let us know.

In this edition: Roger Dumas on the Center for Cognitive Sciences Web site

What were your reasons for redesigning the site?
Our old design was based on tables and I wanted to move to CSS and server-side includes to make the site look better and make my life easier.

What kind of user research or user testing did you do?
I asked co-workers, friends and family to look at the design on different platforms and browsers.

What factors went in to the organization of the site?
I wanted quick loading, which meant creating style sheets, writing re-usable HTML (includes) and using fewer graphics.

How did you think about the visual design of your site within the context of the University brand?
This was a hard one, mostly because I was limited to a few colors and no logos.

What was the biggest challenge, and how did you get past it?
Learning how to properly use server-side includes was a big challenge. The site works at this point, but my pages are all at the same level for technical reasons. Gotta figure how to make their graphics appear after I put them in folders. Also, scrapping the idea of a logo for the department put a wrench in the works. Instead, I used a watermark and an interesting font.

How did you manage the project and keep it on track?
Since I'm the entire team, I only had to manage my own time (on top of my research and three other sites.)

What did you learn from the process?
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and server-side includes are not too difficult to learn and implement, plus they are saving me tons of time making the inevitable changes. I weaned myself from total reliance on Dreamweaver templates and am very glad I took the time to do it.

How are you evaluating the redesign's success?
I'm continuing to make adjustments to account for IE6's idiosyncrasies as people tell me about them.