Convergence Website Redesign Client Presentation

1. Convergence Website RedesignClient Presentation May 9, 2012 9 a.m. Capstone Team: Ashley Crockett, Nicole Garner and Thomas Koll <presentation>

2. Project Summary • Creating a user-friendly, fluid website for the Convergence Journalism interest area • Current site dated • Difficult for faculty to update • Not meeting all student and faculty needs • Second semester of the project • Sorting through previous work to continue project

3. Previous Work • Online Survey • Sampled Convergence students regarding needs • 100% completion by 31 students • Poorly constructed questions • Faculty Interviews • Discussions with faculty members regarding needs • Information was not passed along to current team • Research into Content Management Systems (CMS) • Final report inconclusive, difficult to interpret • Team created a rough site we were able to expand from

4. Client Needs • Shaped how we addressed site redesign project as a whole • Less research, more construction • Short amount of time to complete site migration • Last team spent more time researching than building • Determine student, faculty needs early • Quick re-interviewing of faculty • Using our own opinions/experience as a student perspective • Explore CMS/platforms used by similar online entities

5. Client Needs • One client, multiple audiences • Faculty site for class organization/reference • Students using site for class information, reference, help files • Prospective students looking for program information • Online audience yet to be exposed to website or who might have stumbled across the website • While only one client, we had to consider all of these audiences for site reorganization

6. Client Needs

7. Client Wants

8. Client Wants

9. Initial Planning and Research • Project broken down into two segments: • Pre-site construction • Understanding, developing list of client needs through interviews • Exploring and researching similar websites • Determining a CMS • Migration of site content • Post-site construction • User Experience Testing (UX Testing) • Final site corrections and edits • Site publishing

10. Researching Comparable Schools • Spent time looking at other journalism schools and their websites • Main observations: • The design of the site • Site building technique (hand-coded or CMS?) • Need for a webmaster (can anyone without a web background update this?)

11. Columbia Journalism School • Javascript heavy • No apparent CMS • Would require a webmaster • Clean design

12. New York University Journalism School • HTML5 • No apparent CMS • Would require a webmaster • Clean design but lacked flow

13. Walter Cronkite School of Journalism (ASU) • Specifically hand built by a team • Would require a webmaster • Generic design overloads the eyes with text

14. Boston University College of Communication • Used a Wordpress template • Does not necessarily require a webmaster; school does have a web master • Clean, catchy design

15. Missouri School of Journalism • Uses a Wordpress template • Does not necessarily require a webmaster • Busy design distracts eyes

16. CMS Selection • Wordpress as selected CMS • Current site ran off Wordpress, potentially making site migration easier • Familiar to faculty, staff and students • Easy to update and access • Would not require a webmaster or web design pro to maintain

17. Site Construction • Updates and plugins • Old site was five updates behind • Obtained needed plugins: video embedding, spam control, calendar, creating backup files • Major Changes • Changed the theme to “Colorway Pro” • One time cost of $45 • Allowed us to access HTML/CSS for futher customization • Allowed a photo slider to display more content on front page

18. Site Construction • Design • Kept with black and gold color scheme • Using pre-made “ColorwayPro”theme for pages • Created a less dated banner – Ashley created multiple banners before we settled on one we liked • Updated navigation • Created two main navigations on home page • Interior pages also hold navigation and “quick links”

20. User Testing and Feedback • Spent time researching user testing methods • Created own test consisting of six tasks • Required user to find their way to a particular portion of site • Required user to find a particular item • Allowed user to give us feedback on design or portions of the site that were not “naturally easy” • Goal was to target multiple kinds of users: • Students in a variety of Convergence courses • Non-journalism users • Faculty (less testing, more feedback)

21. User Testing Tasks • Recorded information about each test taker • Age, journalism status, computer and Internet skills • Normal online activities, previous visits to Convergence site, computer/browser information • First glance feedback • Asked about the interpreted purpose of the site • Questioned first glance design appeal • Six tasks: • Locating contact information of a faculty member • Finding a specific student-produced story • Locating Frequently Asked Questions • Finding a student blog • Locating information about lab equipment and checkout procedures • Finding a specific assignment on a syllabus

22. UX Testing Feedback

23. Problems Encountered • Server connection • Had some issues with the server connection – often times slow • CMS control and customizing • Many fancier websites are built/maintained by private companies; those sites use fancier techniques that would require a webmaster • Had to keep much of site relatively simple and easy for future managers • Task team issues • After dividing up work and creating a scheduled work flow, we lost a group member and had to re-saddle the amount of work

24. Final Product Check out the upgraded, finished website

25. Sustainability • Calendar • We suggest having a TA, project managers or department administrative assistant regularly editing this • Student work • Project managers will be able to log in, add a new page and upload content • This system takes responsibility off faculty and gives project managers something to show for efforts • Course information • Faculty can easily edit syllabus and course information on one page – no longer a series of pages for each week of the semester • Enable Commenting • Too much spam—had to temporarily disable • Once Justin enables automatic updates, the spam plugin will work

26. Project Manager Inclusion • Simple as creating a blog post, also gives experience with SEO and web publishing • Project Manager logs in, creates new post • Adds content to post • Categorizes as student work • Creates tags, potentially an excerpt • Selects a featured image • Publishes!

27. Questions? Comments?Let’s discuss. </presentation> <discussion />