This is the tenth in a several-part series of interviews with communicators who have redesigned orupdated their Web sites. If you have redesigned your site or have a site to suggest for these interviews, let us know.
In this edition: Susan Andre and Nuria Sheehan on the College of Education and Human Development Web site redesign
What were your reasons for redesigning the site?
It really had been pretty clear that the site was overdue for a redesign. The last redesign had been in 2001 and since that time not only had Web standards evolved, but CEHD also drastically changed, becoming a new college.
The primary goal in redesigning the site was to create a straightforward, intuitive structure and design for our audiences. A secondary goal was to be able to implement not only the actual site, but also an internal overall process that could be flexible and agile in order adapt to new types of content or update easily with changing Web standards. An important part of this flexibility involved creating content dynamically driven by our blogs or other applications.
What kind of user research or user testing did you do?
User testing was very important to us in this process and we did testing on terminology, homepage concepts, and overall wireframe usability. Because we identified the primary purpose of the site as a tool for recruiting and retaining students, most of the testing focused on student content.
We first completed the terminology testing with the Usability Lab last summer. Then, when students were back on campus, we did the homepage concept testing at the CEHD block party. We surveyed students, faculty, and staff on three distinct concepts for the homepage splash module: academic departments (focusing on the disciplines within each department), people (highlighting CEHD students, faculty, and alumni), and history (which showed the historic advances at the U in the areas of education and human development alongside current innovations). From this survey we received over 130 responses with the "people" concept getting the most votes.
When we had completed wireframes, we did the usability testing with the Usability Lab. From that testing we found that the overall structure was working well and which specific areas needed to be reworked.
What factors went in to the organization of the site?
The most important factor in organizing the site was that it be audience-focused rather than representing internal silos. The entire redesign process, and particularly in terms of coming up with top-level categories and a structure, was very collaborative with a redesign group made up of members from across the college.
From these group meetings, it was clear that a consistent navigation in addition to complex menus for specific areas was needed, so we decided to represent the structure with a prominent top navigation along with area-specific left navigation.
How did you think about the visual design of your site within the context of the University brand?
With the new design we continued to follow University recommendations by implementing the latest version of branding standards. The brand is carried through in the use of the Neutra font along the main navigation and colors that work well with maroon and gold.
What was the biggest challenge, and how did you get past it?
At early stages in the process there hadn't been key contact identified for all areas. Without those contacts it was challenging to move forward on certain areas, but we found that by continuing to ask directors or others in positions of leadership, that we did eventually ended up with a working group of very engaged participants from all areas.
How did you manage the project and keep it on track?
We created a timeline which included a combination of very firm and some more flexible dates. Having some firm dates early in process (for example, wireframe usability testing), helped keep things on track. Once we were at the stage to start gathering content, we created an inventory of all the pages and descriptions of content needed. In order to pull this together, individuals responsible for delivering source content were identified and given deadlines.
We also had frequent meetings with either the large redesign or smaller groups to be able to adapt either process or content as needed.
What did you learn from the process?
Emphasizing a site redesign as an ongoing process more than a final product helped us take a more flexible and long-term view of the effort. It also useful in getting buy-in from stakeholders; they knew that there would continue to be opportunities for change if certain things weren't working. This outlook helped all of us have an openness to try new things.
How are you evaluating the redesign's success?
We feel like the site has just moved on to the next redesign phase: a continuous and iterative redesign so that hopefully we can easily make improvements as our content and audience expectations change. So we're working with students to get feedback and do more informal usability testing and are using custom reports in Google Analytics.
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