Monthly Archives: April 2011

A Whirlwind with White Whale

Whew, I’m still catching my breath from two very full days with Tonya and Janie!

Tonya forged through a 25 meetings with different departments, offices and committees without batting an eye. Most of her time was spent with individual departments and offices, giving them expert advice on their information architecture and content. Thanks to these departments and offices for making time to meet with her to discuss their new sites:

Sustainability, Music, Business Office, Career Center, Sociology, Comp. Lit., Classics, Anthropology, Public Interest Fellowship, Writing Center/FYE, Center for Service and Learning, Economics, Res. Life, IT, Student Life, Registrar, Human Resources, Deans’ Office, Education, International and Off-campus Study, Facilities, Neuroscience, Advancement, English, Legal Counsel

Those of you who met with her should have a good head start on your new sites. As mentioned during your appointments, here’s what all departments and offices should be doing next:

  1. Finalize your information architecture (IA). Send your finished IA to me — I’ll create a skeleton of your site when the new CMS is up and running.
  2. Think about what feature areas (calendar, news, blog, etc.) you’d like on your homepage. If you’re an academic department, you can also choose which homepage design you’d like to use (see Okay, departments: here are three options!).
  3. Work on the static text for your site. Tonya recommends one Word document per web page.

Meanwhile, Janie held an open session for faculty to weigh in on academic department homepages (which are nearing completion), gave two sections of her course on making stuff look good on the Web, met with the library to discuss their presence on the new site, and brainstormed with communications and the faculty members of the redesign working group.

Janie’s presentation is available here: brightness: a quick primer for making stuff look good on the web

Hats off to Tonya and Janie!