We are rapidly approaching the cut-over date for our new web site. Our administration in all of its glory hired a sociologist to sort it out, on the theory that anyone can design a web site now, since the president's nephew does their family web site.
I participated in the planning long enough to keep them from shooting themselves in the foot technologically. I do have other jobs to do, so I've kept out of the design step, apart from sending this fine XKCD joke on to the guy when he asked for faculty input. He did not actually understand the joke and is now including the "Alumni in the News" feature.
The texts have been re-written by out-of-work journalists who are out of work for a reason and appear incapable of understanding why the university is not a uniformly structurable entity. The design uses 56% of standard screen space for colorful pictures and white space. The last time I looked there were seven (7) sublevels of structure.
The main programmer for the job has even confided that it is going to be a disaster, and he does not normally initiate communication. He is frustrated by not having plans of any kind, just a growing bunch of texts that are to be shoehorned into the pretty design.
The fun thing is that the web site is deeply reflective of the current internal structure of the school, which we are currently in the process of revising. This is a structure that very few people understand.
So the next few weeks will be like watching a high-speed train hit a wall in slow motion. How have web updates worked in your schools?
I am reminded of the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel. Our planetarium director had a clever way of dealing with higher-ups meddling in the construction of his planetarium: he told them he needed help with the design of a sundial in the front lobby. They argued among themselves about this so much, they didn't bother him much about the rest of the planetarium.
ReplyDeleteWeb updates, by the way, went well at our school, because the disability office insisted that the web page be as accessible to as many different kinds of disabilities as possible. This led to a web page that was very basic, lacking many of the latest, fancy do-dads: in other words, it gets its point across, and it's easy to use.
Oddly, I used the xkcd cartoon to comment on our university's web site revamp. They appeared to use the xkcd stuff (the left side circle slice) as their template.
ReplyDeleteIt is, quite simply, awful. You have to scroll down a full screen to get to the links you need to (really) use. The home page is even worse on lab machines that have lower resolution. [It is clear that the developers were using large, maybe 22" high-res displays and not the 17" low-res monitors that are in the labs and classrooms.]
Once again: "Die IT, die!"
P.S. And they did not include a mobile site. Their web site is unusable on an iPhone or Droid.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine how the site could/would be handicap accessible.
"Die IT, die!"
By "web updates" do you mean the year long redesign that involved student and faculty input, an understanding of the school's position in the higher ed market and a month of focus group testing? Or do you mean when the university president tells IT, "My wife doesn't like how that looks. Change it"?
ReplyDeleteNeither went well, actually.
Web sites that are "accessible"? Don't you guys think we baby people with disabilities just a bit too much?
ReplyDeleteThe XKCD comic expressed my complaints better than I could.
ReplyDeleteAside from this, I have a big problem with website designers who are obviously using and testing the sites only on top-of-the-line computers with super-speedy internet connections. Like many of my fellow students and instructors, I'm using a netbook (different screen ratio) on the university's on-again off-again network. Just make it functional.
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ReplyDelete@Froderick
ReplyDeleteThat is a KICK-ASS way of dealing with administrators and I am stealing it!
The item listed on the right side of the xkcd cartoon (which is, indeed, spot-on) that I always wish were quicker to access is the academic calendar. At the moment, it takes 3 clicks to get from our home page to the calendar for the present semester, 4 if you count clicking on a drop-down menu to get to the first click. And you have to know which drop-down menu to choose (though, actually, the ones on our page are pretty well-designed, and provide quick access to separate entry pages for students, prospective students, faculty, etc. -- not a bad approach). Except for the drop-down menus, the whole home page is a PR exercise: big slide show and lots of news links of the "look what our faculty/students/alums/sports teams are doing" variety. I suppose that serves a purpose, and I do occasionally find out interesting things by accident when I need to go to the home page, but there's no illusion that it's there primarily for the benefit of current students and/or faculty. It would be nice if more of the stuff highlighted were academic resources: "remember our librarians are available by chat and at the reference desk from x to x today" or something like that.
ReplyDeleteWe cannot find anything at all using the university website. The IT guys themselves have lists of URLs they've bookmarked to get to anything they really need. There is a special place to sign in if you're a faculty member, which leads to a bewildering array of nothing whatever you need, and it will take at least 12 clicks to find anything you do need. Every time they redesign it the useful links get buried farther.
ReplyDeleteAnd then they decided to buy Banner from some American school on a trimester system. We are not on a trimester system. We cannot find ANYTHING on Banner. Nobody can. You have to know the special codes and nobody knows the special codes.
Plus, when they bought Banner they didn't bother to find out if it included a "report" function. Before Banner, we could get a list of students who got As in our classes this term, listed alphabetically by last name. (We need this for awarding scholarships.) This took someone over in the Registrar's 2 clicks. Banner doesn't do this. It now takes 2 people over in the Registrar's 3 full days to do it by hand.
Oh, and I forgot: Banner doesn't like full-year courses. So the administration is trying to make us get rid of our full-year courses, despite the fact that they are highly successful and there are sound pedagogical reasons for teaching that way, because their lame-ass computer system doesn't like them.
ReplyDeleteYes, yes, yes! The academic calendar! Ours is at the registrar, buried. And our silly course management software has a "calendar" function that does not correspond to the academic calendar.
ReplyDeleteOurs was a bloody disaster, of course they had to do it right in the middle of the spring semester instead of waiting until the summer, when far less people would be affected by it and most staff would have had more time to work on moving all the pages to the new content management system. Our section of the site, the area for which I am responsible, jumped from 0-5 Page Not Found errors per day, to 100-250+. Site-wide, we have something like 5,000+ Page Not Found errors per day. That means thousands of people - prospective students, specifically - click on links to our site that do not work because they recklessly changed all the URLs. The whole site is a mess, people are working 12 hour days, students are frustrated because they cannot find the information they need, it's a disaster and I have no doubt this will affect enrollment as the Admissions section is in especially dire straits.
ReplyDeleteThe simple way to avoid such a disaster: don't shut down the old site until the new one is 100% ready. Instead of letting us review our new sites and ensure that links are working, they imposed an arbitrary deadline and shut down the old server. Most people just accepted this; I complained relentlessly, begged for more time, went all the way up the ladder, but that only resulted in everyone calling me an hysterical liar who was overreacting to something that would be perfectly fine. They destroyed my credibility to the point where my own boss didn't believe me and ignored my suggestion to speak to her boss, our dean, about the problems the site migration would cause. She got irritated with my relentless complaints and insisted the dean wouldn't even notice the site had moved. Needless to say, he did notice, wants to know why he wasn't kept informed, and now I'm going to have to figure out how to avoid making my boss look bad as that was never my intention, she's a decent sort, but she should have told him about this before it happened, rather than hoping he wouldn't notice. She chose to believe everyone else who said there would be no visible difference, and chose not to believe me when I said it would cause a world of problems. So now he wants to meet with both of us and we have to retcon the situation so it does not appear that she was careless in not informing him about this. I can't afford to fall on my sword but it would be worse for me if this meeting makes her look bad.
I wish that saying "I told you so," was more satisfying, but I don't want anyone to have to work 12-hour days, no matter how much they destroyed my credibility and questioned my technical expertise, I don't want to keep moms and dads from their kids or in at least one case, a woman from the bedside of her dying father-in-law and grieving husband - she was not permitted to take a personal day so had to work from the hospital on her laptop. It's heartbreaking to listen to someone weeping on the phone as they ask you how to do some stupid technical thing, no one should have to work under those circumstances.