ellen kanner

Colleagues have asked that our group in Web Services post about projects we;’re working on… so for those following, here’s my first update — the undertaking (or would that be overtaking) of Dartmouth’s IT/Computing website.

I’m on the working group to rethink and redesign the Computing at Dartmouth website. The site was originally built 4-5 years ago, and one can tell by quick glance, it’s based on a more “institutional” view which is apparent in the architecture. Well, we won’t be going with this model in the next one.

We’re about a third of the way through the project and all seems to be going well at this point – we’ve done our survey of users, our asking of “what do you want to see here?”, our due diligence, and seeking out sites on the web that we’d like to emulate. One is Duke’s IT website… we like the straightforward approach, the clean navigation, the easy-to-use appearance. So we’re at the point of wireframes and architecture, and rethinking content.

Some thoughts for this project:

• The site will be a “self-help” point of service.
• Content is being re-written for the web – if any procedure takes longer than 8-10 steps, it’s probably too long for the majority of our users to figure out on their own.
• Architecture based on user-centered principles, not the lay of the land from an institutional perspective.
• Prominent search box, and better tagging of pages and the use of the search engine’s Quick Link feature.
• This is Computing at Dartmouth – whether it be from a professional school, or from the Computing division – having the homepage of this project be the prominent entry point to all IT at Dartmouth is one of the goals.

We have plenty to cover, but this touches on our focus right now. It will be different – stay tuned.