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Fresno State's Journey to a Dynamic, Responsive Online Catalog

Learn about Fresno State's journey to a responsive online catalog, the design process, reactions, observations, and lessons learned.

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Fresno State's Journey to a Dynamic, Responsive Online Catalog

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  1. Fresno State's Journey to a Dynamic, Responsive Online Catalog Dawn Truelsen California State University, Fresno

  2. Today’s talk • Background • Design process & build out • Reactions & observations • Analytics • Lessons learned

  3. Background

  4. Fresno State overview • 23K students • 3 Divisions & 9 Schools/Colleges • OmniUpdate customer since Spring 2011 • 95% of campus sites in OmniUpdate Fall 2012 • ~30K pages • The previous catalog was not in our CMS

  5. How the project started • Catalog presentation at a conference in 2012 • Lynn Zawie @ Stonybrook was a tremendous help! • Last printed catalog 2012-2013 • Dean of Undergraduate Students gave “thumbs up” and funding to proceed

  6. Why a responsive catalog? • IT Strategic Plan included mobile web strategy • Catalog added as an in-flight project/budget item • Responsive for our mobile web strategy • Used the catalog as the pilot project for the bigger strategic plan projects: • Faculty Directory (PeopleSoft) • Mobile Web Strategy (All CMS templates)

  7. Influences • NN/g web usability • College Students on the Web (18-24) • Mobile Usability Reports • Service oriented architecture >> Student oriented Architecture • Move away from organization-drive IA • Stats • Campus-wide IA**

  8. Design Process & Build OUt

  9. Starting the project • OmniUpdate gave us a spec document & demo • Prototype of the structure • Designed for the phone first • Studied what students really use from the catalog • Content Audit of the print and online catalogs (OMG!)

  10. Design process • What students want: • Shop for/navigate by degree • Degree first, not college first • Related web content: degree road map, career info, complete faculty list (not curated list), academic calendar. • Degrees up front, “blah, blah” at the back • Kept degrees and registration (plus CO required content) • Removed the rest • added back in if there was “freak out”

  11. Old catalog

  12. Responsive

  13. Handsets iPhone 4 Samsung Galaxy 3S

  14. How do you spell mash-up? • Dynamic data sources: • PeopleSoft: Course descriptions, degrees offered, dept. faculty • 25Live!: Academic Calendar • Manually maintained data: • Requirements (unable to export from very old DARS system) • Careers • Degree Roadmaps • Policies, regulations (the “blah blah”)

  15. Live site?http://www.fresnostate.edu/catalog

  16. Reactions & Observations

  17. People issues (change is so hard!) • Requirements • Catalog update process not tight • Will people lose their jobs? • The connection between PeopleSoft data and the catalog (a.k.a. the power to jack things up!) • Multiple departments now maintaining one site • Data ownership/information technology concepts • Real vs. perceived workflow changes for curriculum approval • BizFlow for undergraduate curriculum changes • No business process for grad curriculum changes • Since it is from PeopleSoft, now we don’t need review

  18. Data integrity issues • How tight is your PeopleSoft data? • Existing catalog: • Courses that hadn’t been available for 15+ years • Programs that had been deactivated for 2-3 years • Programs that had never been open for enrollment • Few understood that printed catalog data was maintained separately from the data in PeopleSoft • Administrators didn’t know that PS is the source students use primarily during registration

  19. How was it received? • Administrators? • Faculty? • Staff? • Students?

  20. Analytics

  21. Analytics strategy • GA • Device data • Events • Search

  22. Two and a half terms of analytics 5,033 - November Fall 2013 4,381 - April Spring 2014 3,137 – August. Catalog peak expected in November Fall 2014 to date

  23. From launch August: 5,580 ** September: 92,267 October: 163,725 November: 193,718 December: 95,515 Launch mid-month >> Registration >>

  24. Top pages Spring 2014 Fall 2013 Fall 2014 to date (Haven’t hit our fall peak yet)

  25. Device activity Spring 2014 Fall 2013 Fall 2014 to date (Haven’t hit our fall peak yet)

  26. Lessons Learned

  27. Lessons learned • OmniUpdate was super responsive to our needs and very receptive to our ideas • The technology was the easiest part! • People are crazy interesting • The students love it – they are our customers • The adults are adjusting

  28. The real lessons learned… • The prototype was key, but expect changes along the way. Iterate and don’t sweat it! • Do a process map ahead of time • Note staff, offices involved, data sources, etc • Check your data at time of spec • Adjust timeline to account for data integrity, assign responsibility (not the web team) • Define who will approve the data, when they are on campus! • Search is huge in mobile, make sure yours works

  29. Next steps • Catalog • Unifying navigation • Business processes (curriculum approval, certificates) • Major DARS update • Faculty directory • Roll out of responsive throughout CMS

  30. My advice… • Be bold • A mobile resource is a unique beast • The old, stodgy order and content doesn’t translate > cut, edit, reorder, refine • What you can’t cut (for political reasons) • Prioritize low in the UI, • Rewrite for the web (if possible), • Make it easy to find via search • Remember, students are search dominant

  31. Thanks!

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