New design sneak peek!

We’re continuing the site’s new design based on wireframe D now and it’s looking good!

I thought I’d link to the designs here so you get a sneak peek of the direction we’re heading. This is still quite early and we plan to do formal reviews of the design here on the blog to get feedback/suggestions/comments, but I know everyone is curious about the new direction, so why wait?

Here are a few samples of the homepage template (NOTE: the homepage content is yet to be discussed in great detail — we’ve been focusing on the “shell” of the new site’s design which includes the top navigation, surrounding background elements, footer, and initial typography and color ideas):

• Homepage: This is what the user will see when they first get to ewu.edu
• Main navigation mouseover state: When the user mouses over a main navigation button, they’ll see a slightly lighter gray background (see the Admissions button in the upper left)
• Audience navigation mouseover state: When a user mouses over one of the audience links in the upper right, this menu will slide down (only after a slight delay though lest we annoy users with random popping up of unrequested menus) NOTE: Which links we use in these menus are still being worked out.
• Quicklinks mouseover state: This is what the user will see when they mouse over the QuickLinks tab. Note the “Customize…” link at the bottom. This link will take users to a page where they can decide what QuickLinks they’d like to have in that menu. The list will be computer-specific so will be handy for faculty/staff here on campus who use the same computer to frequently access certain areas of the EWU site.
• Auxiliary message layer: This area will only appear if users click the overhead screen handle present directly below the main navigation. We haven’t decided how this will look yet, but this is an initial idea. It is just another way for us to present as complete of a picture as we can about EWU and its surroundings through current regional data, photos, videos and potentially other social networking widgets.

There you have it! An initial look at the new design. Depending on the feedback we get with it, the design will evolve and probably change over the coming weeks but this should get you thinking about it (and hopefully a little excited too!). We’re working on internal page look & feel now (left navigation, content headers, etc.) so we’ll post those when the dust clears a little bit on the design.

Please feel free to leave comments!

social networking

Just a little mini-plug here for some of our social networking efforts that will begin to tie in more directly to our University website. For those of you who haven’t seen them, I invite you to check out the following links to see other areas that EWU is beginning to maintain a presence.

• Facebook
• Flickr (check out the EWU Flickr group to join and contribute EWU photos to the pool!)
• YouTube
• MySpace
• Start Something Big (of course!)

Thanks to John Demke, Kit Frantzich and Sam Buzby for the hard work on getting these up and running and maintaining them. We’ve already had great successes with them and we’re still at the tip of the iceberg!

With the redesign, we’re planning on tying directly into these services to enhance the experience and increase effectiveness of the University website. The goal is to give external audiences (be they future/current students, potential faculty or staff, community members, alumni, etc.) a more holistic picture of the University and the people who make the EWU world go ’round. Look for some of the ideas on how we’ll accomplish this in upcoming posts….

Also, some of you who might be EWU Alumni should check out their new site. The social networking aspect of it is very strong and they have some great functionality around event registration/notification.

We’re also planning on infiltrating the worlds of Wikipedia and Zinch more effectively. We’re considering Twitter as a possibility but we’re not yet sure how effective that will be in this market. If you have any other ideas or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments!

user testing feedback!

EDIT: It came to my attention that nowhere in here did I reference what was Wireframe C and what was Wireframe D. Just to be totally clear –

• This is wireframe C
• This is wireframe D

Maybe I should do some user testing for this blog?

Today was our first day of user testing with the functional wireframes we created for the website redesign. I went up to Ferris High School this morning and sat down with a handful of students to go through the wireframes with some basic user tasks to see how the site organization and navigation worked for them.

Boy, was it awesome.

There’s a lot riding on these user tests. I’ve referenced on more than one occasion in my presentations that if these user tests don’t go well, we’ll go back to the drawing board and rethink our approach.

I’m pleased to announce that it looks like we can safely put the drawing board away! The functional wireframes were received very well. Here’s my bullet-pointed summary:

• Users preferred the functionality of wireframe D over wireframe C
• They hardly noticed (i.e., they effortlessly used them) the left nav, top nav and dropdowns — a sign of a strong user interface
• For tasks like finding tuition/fees, program information, majors/minors, financial aid, directions, etc. users looked in their logical buckets without using the dropdown audience-based navigation. This is a big point! If something didn’t fit as nicely into those categories (things like housing/dining info, clubs & activities, etc.) they went for the audience dropdowns. Otherwise, they used the main navigation bar — Academics, Admissions, Resources, etc. — or the footer for their primary information needs.
• Having the “Apply Now” link prominent in the masthead made it extremely easy for them to point to where they would go to Apply. A couple of students felt that the Future Students dropdown and then the Apply Now link was more comfortable for them but that it was just a matter of preference
• Users clicked on the logo in the upper left when told to go “Home.”
• When showed the initial two design concepts, users preferred the look of C over D, stating consistently that they felt there was too much “white” in design D. They liked the functionality of content and navigation in D better than C, but they felt that the lack of color was a drawback to D and still reminiscent of the current EWU site.
• When users did get lost (which happened rarely) it had to do with how content was laid out on what we call the “splash” pages — pages without the left navigation. This is good because those problems are easily remedied by improved design and/or seasonal updates.
• I heard at least 5 or 6 times, “Wow, that was easy!” with an almost surprised tone to it. I think these students have either A) tried to navigate our current site or B) had bad luck navigating other university sites!

There’s the synopsis! All in all, I’m very pleased with what we’ve put together and I think the fruits of the research and work we’ve all done up until this point is beginning to pay off! I’m planning to do another group of students this week or very early next week, but things are looking promising for a modified version of wireframe D! We’re now working on aesthetic design options of the D functionality.

Thanks to everyone who has been involved in this process so far! You are all fantastic to work with and I applaud you for your dedication and commitment to doing what is most right for EWU. In particular, I’d like to thank the following folks who have spent a great number of hours so far to get us to the point we’re currently at:

• The MarCom Web Team (Sam Buzby, Kit Frantzich, Sheila Wollweber)
• The IT Web Team (Alex Chernikov, Betsy Knox, Colin Turnbull)
• The EWU Web Community Leaders (Paul Merchant, Dana Simmelink, Scott Zinn)
• The rest of the MarCom team for their valued input and ideas (Dave Sonntag, Teresa Conway, Kandi Carper, John Demke, Dave Meany, Ryan Gaard, Matt Hepworth, Steve Bateman)
• Desautel Hege Communications (Michelle Hege, Kristen Paul, Lisa Cargill)
• Klundt-Hosmer Design (thanks Rick and Mastery!)

…forgive me if I’ve forgotten anyone!

So, onward and upward! We will continue to test and post more of our findings. Once we have the initial design concepts ready as well, those will go up for all to comment on.

today’s QSI presentation at eastern washington university

Today I gave a little diddy on the Eastern Washington University website overhaul at the 7th Annual QSI Conference. For those of you who don’t know, the QSI Conference at EWU is basically a two-day period where there are multiple sessions folks can attend that are lead by EWU faculty and staff on topics ranging from how to open jobs with the marketing department to assistive technology to maintaining a positive attitude.

For my presentation, I basically gave a quick update on how the website redesign project is going. The presentation is available here in PDF form (careful! it’s about a 9.5MB file) if you’d like to download a copy for yourself. It may seem a little odd without me talking about it, but I think you’ll get the idea. You’ll find links to our semi-functional wireframes within with which we’ll be conducting user testing as well as an initial look at some early look and feel concepts for the new website design.

Thanks to those of you who attended! I know we’ll be seeing more of each other sooner than later.