5 charts on South Africa as a source country for international student recrui...
Redesigning the University Website: Participatory Design Case Study
1. Redesigning the
University Website:
Participatory Design
Case Study
Stefanie Panke, Georgia
Allen & Dan McAvinchey
University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill
AACE E-Learn 2014
October 27-30th
New Orleans
2. University Website
Digital (inter)face of the
organization
Gateway to open access
content and education
resources
3. Challenges
Many stakeholders with different interests, backgrounds,
motives and varying expertise in web content management
6. Problems with Current Website
• Poor search results / retrieval options
• Cumbersome navigation
• Unclear structure, disjointed information
• Lack of flexibility from faculty perspective
• Dated content, broken links
• No integration of blogs / multisite content
• Poor performance on mobile devices
• Lack of Web Analytics Data
7. Faculty as Co-Designers
• Paradigm shift from ‘users as subjects’ to ‘users as
partners’: Recruiting the faculty as co-designers
• Shift from of discussing all that is dissatisfying to
building solutions
• Rapid prototyping, not in bits and bytes, but with
paper, play dough, scissors, glue.
8. Goals of the Redesign Process
• Engagement: Immerse faculty as deeply as
possible in the process to leverage their expertise
and experience.
• Mutual learning: Create shared understanding of
web content management concepts, e.g., content
types, dynamic views, categories, filters, …
• Innovative thinking: Create space that allows
people to be innovative and creative as a
foundation for true, substantial change
9. Process
• August 2013- June 2014
• Two groups with 10, resp. 15 faculty members
• Additional consultation meetings
• 11 sessions that lasted 90-120 minutes in length
• Voluntary participation, no incentive for faculty
members
• Outcome: Detailed conceptual design with broad
organizational buy-in
• Participants represented approximately 40 % of
the overall faculty in the School
10. Workshop Topics
• Who is our audience?
• How should we structure our content?
• What categories will we use to organize the
information?
• What will the navigation and overall
information architecture look like?
11. Audience
• Goal: Identify
potential
audiences for the
online resource
• Exercise: Personas
12. Personas
• Personas are vivid descriptions of explicitly
fictional characters that embody behaviors
and motivations that a group of real users
might express.
13. Structure
• Before the workshop: participants email list of
audiences
• Aggregated list is reviewed in workshop
• Additional brainstorming
• Groups work on personas
• Completed personas are displayed and ranked
(voting)
14. Exercise
• Form groups of 3-5
• Work across specialties
• Create different Personas (3-5)
• Be as generic as possible, as specific as
necessary
• Approx. 20-30 minutes
17. Structure
• Brainstorm / research comprehensive list of
ways in which the organization disseminates
information
• Assign 1-2 ‘information curators’ per resource
type
• Create representation of different assets
(books, news, user profiles, articles….) using
building blocks
20. Exercise
• ‘Information Curators
describe the content
using the building
blocks provided
• Add additional
elements as needed
• Time: Approx. 25
minutes
23. Categories
Goal: Harmonize different
sets of categories to create
functional vocabulary
• speak to faculty, staff
and clients / web users
• allow for effective
information
display in more than one
place
24. Taxonomy
• Tree structure
• Strict taxonomy:
Every item has one
exact place
• Related concept:
Ontology – multiple,
interconnected
trees
27. Categorize Resource Sites: Round 1
• Form 5 Teams (1-2)
• Each team categorizes 3 resource sites
• Each team assigns 2 categories per resource.
• Time: 5 Minutes!
28. Categorize Resource Sites: Round 2
• Switch resource sites between team
• Assign 2 categories, only if needed
• Change and edit as you see fit!
• Time: 5 Minutes!
32. Navigation
Your Mission: We invite you to think about the
website as a museum. You are planning an
exhibition of the School’s concept, work and
content.
You are here: School
of Government Courts
Wing ….
33. Think Pair: Museum Map
• Form groups of 2-3
• What are the
orientation points
you want to put on
the museum map?
• Time: 10 minutes
34. Group Exercise: Structure
• Work in groups
(government vs.
courts)
• Build a structure for
your area of
expertise
(government / court)
• Time: 30 minutes
38. Summary
• The best web content management system
can only work effectively if the people who
provide the content work with it and not
against it.
• Participatory design processes take up
considerable time and resources, but can lay
the foundation for substantial change.
• It can make sense to work with different
segments of the organization separately.
39. Outlook
• Completed: Design Concept / Technical Feasibility
• Currently: Implementation process
• Next spring: Usability tests and faculty review
• Anticipated launch: April 2014
Editor's Notes
The best web content management system can only work effectively if the people who provide the content work with it and not against it and are productive because of it and not despite of it.
The UNC School of Government’s web presence has evolved considerably over the past several years. Most significantly, its website was transformed from a static site to the content management system Drupal in 2011. As the School had evolved in its understanding and needs of web technology applications, so has the open source community that supports the Drupal CMS: While the School’s multisite environment for the web presence was still based on Drupal 6, Drupal 7 had been widely adopted in the community and Drupal 8 was already looming on the horizon.
When we first started talking about tackling the design of the School of Government website, Georgia and I shared some memories of other institutional website redesign processes we have been part of – or rather suffered through – in our professional careers. Our shared experience, and I think this is rather common – was that after endless meetings with heated, passionate discussions, usually very little actual change did occur. This is why we decided to shift our focus away from the desired outcome and towards the process. We were looking for an approach to discuss website changes and requirements in a new, more productive way:
We wanted to create and orchestrate a process that was engaging, fostered mutual learning and allowed for innovative thinking to take place so that we could lay the foundation for true, substantial change. For instance, instead of describing how their content should best be structured, we asked them to use glue sticks and stickers and show us.
The first website workshop explored the School of Government website from the perspective of the external visitors. We used the ‘personas technique’ to create and share narratives. The goal was to enter into a discussion about the website users’ needs, behaviors, and preferences.
POLL: Who has used personas before?
Personas are vivid descriptions of explicitly fictional characters that embody behaviors and motivations that a group of real users might express.
Personas are a great method to start a conversation.
Communicate information about users to development team
Engage diverse groups of project stakeholders
Bring abstract target group information to life
Foster discussion of goals and values
Identify and challenge assumptions
For IT, faculty member are the clients. You are the target audience of our instructional design and web application development services. When it comes to online resources, we rely on faculty to have an informed understanding of their clientele. We realize that you do not have a complete, comprehensive picture, but you do have regular interactions on the phone, in the classroom, during conferences, or in the hallway.
During the second workshop, we discussed the website content. The goal was to leverage content types to display the content in more than one place and more than one way.
During the workshop, we brainstormed different types of resources relevant to the organization (e.g., articles, books, reports, faculty profiles, news, events, courses…).
We then used visual building blocks to represent each content type.
I have designed over 40 different building blocks
I have designed over 40 different building blocks
The School has a total of 66 resource sites, 44 of which are specific to local government. We have heard considerable complaints that the current website and course categories do not work very well. Here is your chance to change that.
Review Mindmaps / Index Cards
Put a sticker on every category you want to see as part of a School of Government Taxonomy
Use small colorful stickers for subcategories
Use large blue stickers for main categories
Time: 20 Minutes
The concept of the School – what we are about, the work that we do, and the content that we offer.
The exercises will focus on 2 areas 1.‘Museum Lobby’ 2. Museum Floor Plan
Who are we?
What do we do?
How do we organize our work?
What are our areas of specialty?
Who is affiliated with us?
What is our output (applied research, teaching, advising?)
Why are we part of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, a research university?
How does the MPA fit?
What will you put in the flyer that visitors hold in their hands as they navigate your museum space? What type of museum is this? What are the main areas of its collection – e.g., government wing, courts wing, MPA floor? Does the museum have any highlights or special exhibitions? What are the museum’s affiliations?
Why is this museum part of the University of North Carolina – does this relationship matter?
Who are we?
What do we do?
How do we organize our work?
What are our areas of specialty?
Who is affiliated with us?
What is our output (applied research, teaching, advising?)
Why are we part of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, a research university?
How does the MPA fit?
Each Building Block represents content – either a resource site, or other site element, like the publications or course catalogue or tools – for example LRS or C-CAT, centers like the CPT and EFC, or initiatives. The plates represent main gateways or portals (rooms of your exhibition space). How do you get from one information item to another? How do they relate to one another? Can we form larger, meaningful groups of items?
Let’s bring it together! Use this poster and the sticky notes to write down the elements we need to display in the lobby to communicate the structure that you have created. (20 minutes)
Finally, I don’t want to come across as overly critical of standardized, multiple choice testing – in fact, this is really not my area of expertise. I completed my education up to my PhD in Germany, back ‘in the good old days’, prior to Bologna Reform. Thinking back on my personal educational experience, I have to say that the only standardized multiple choice quiz I ever took was the theoretical part of my driver’s license test. And it might be worth mentioning that I passed that one with flying colors. However, I did fail the practical part the first time around. And, while on second try I eventually did get my permit, I still remember the tester saying, ‘Young lady, I would never let you drive my car’.