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.

Graduate Workflow Graffle 1.0

Originally uploaded by Jason 2.0.

Because I’m an extremely creative person that thinks visually, it’s been hard to do content inventory and evaluation in Excel. Just seeing page names, ID’s and columns looks foreign. I’ve acclimated somewhat, but when it comes to deconstructing the site and reconstructing, I have to be able to draw. Tim thankfully ordered a huge dry erase board for the conference room and I took full use of it.

Using the Excel and discussion, I simply went in and started drawing a schematic. From that, as a group we were able to solve some very real problems with how our admissions workflow can change.

It’s hard dealing in higher ed with academic programs that each have their own enrollment process, application, and cost. The marketing group, us, has to find a way to make the enrollment and overall Web experience for the end user/prospective student seamless, while the back ground internal constituency is definitely divided into their own pieces of the pie.

Fortunately, I think we came up with a plan that will allow us to translate our internal cultural values to the external audience without confusing them. It was a real breakthrough, because I think we are going to be able to do this for the entire graduate studies site as well as the Degree Completion area. We may even bring the flow into SAUonline. Major victory for us figuring out the “batch”. Let me know what you think of the initial graffle. I’d love to hear some comments. Got some already, so will be making those changes todayish.

Still feel like I’m aiming at a moving target, but I’m willing to do it.