athletics3.6

Originally uploaded by Jason 2.0.
With all the malay of stuff we’ve had to do, I’ve been pretty much out of the loop of what i had hoped to be doing on this project. I’m still a CSS/XHTML beginner and have been kindof relegated to a project manager-type person. I guess we need something like this to hold things together and chart the course, but I was really hoping to have time to get my hands dirtier.

Here are some evolutionary designs for the new athletics site. Joel is designing the main areas, so I’m working on athletics. The funny thing is that I haven’t really designed anything in a few years with more focus being in the video production end as well as IA and User experience. So, I’m needing any feedback from anyone that is reading. Not much feedback here at work. I’ll post some details on each design and hope for some comments. Thebiggest thing that we’re working around is learning a new CMS, so we can’t be too cute with design. I pulled some inspiration from the usual suspects like ESPN, CNNSI, as well as NFL.com’s New England Patriot’s site. That and what the SID brought from local schools and features he requested. Putting that with the current design and timeline, and we have these to work with.

As far as things go here, we’re a month behind and two weeks behind from our week behind timelines. Bottom line: it’s going to be chaotic.

We went through some initial graffles of workflow for targeted constituent groups on campus and will refine those this week.  Our task early is to wireframe the main sections.  I’m headed to InDesign in a few minutes after I do some serious whiteboarding with Joel.  Our bosses are crying out for visual design, and we haven’t even begun it yet.  Feeling like we’re doing diligence with the importan things of content analysis, IA, and messaging/telling the story first.  But today we’re feeling the crunch of getting at least a bare bones design/ideas and wireframes to at least pick apart.

I started reading Bulletproof Friday and will try to devote at least an hour a day to reading and growing in XHTML/CSS, and thinking the right ways about how we need to build this site.  All this and also beginning to play around with Expression Engine.  So I’m really learning…well…I don’t really know how many new things I’m taking in.  But Expression Engine is a tool that I’m thinking about using for a missionary in Africa to manage her content and images.  That and our church is going to EE.  And I have a couple of potential clients that are asking for some sort of CMS.  Of course they aren’t asking specifically for CMS, but wanting all the trappings that go with it.  I’m flirting right now with Expression Engine.  Looked at Plone and some other open-source options, but think that EE could be the way to go if I can invest the time to learn it as well.  Man, I need a mentor to walk me through all of this…

Don’t Make Me Think

Originally uploaded by Jason 2.0.
I just finished this book this afternoon. Wow. I’m a slow reader, so it took me a bit of time to consume this. I brought it with me to Refresh Orlando, so obviously this got put on the fast track. For good reason.

We’ve done usability testing this summer on the current Web site as we attended Jeff Veen’s Usability seminar about two years ago. Joel and I pushed hard and took time to test students the right way. We did focus groups for parents, accelerated degree completion students and graduate students. We published the findings in a comprehensive doc for the VPs and President Beebe. The testing really helped us think strategically about how we would design the new arbor.edu. I’ll publish the doc sometime soon.

What Don’t Make Me Think did was confirm many things we are already putting in process, but also help us really get down to the nitty-gritty on what we’re trying to accomplish. There were tons of things that I could pull out of this, but one key statement was regarding the home page. Krug says:

“As quickly and clearly as possible, the Home page needs to answer the four questions I have in my head when I enter a new site for the first time:

1. What is this?
2. What do they have here?
3. What can I do here?
4. Why should I be here — and not somewhere else?

I need to be able to answer these questions at a glance, correctly and unambiguously with very little effort.”

I believe that’s where we’re headed. He used an exercise that I believe Cameron Moll did in his presentation at Refresh Orlando with squinting at the home page. If you can blur the page and still make out what the basic story is, what it’s about, or where the main sections are, you’ve succeeded. If we value everything and focus on nothing, we’ve lost.

Judging from some preliminary design and IA, I think we’re on the right path. Especially after listening to our audience. I think we’re going to try and do some preliminary usability testing with some of our preliminary PSDs when they are generated to get impressions and feedback. Before we walk down roads too far and too long. Let’s do things right.