Making it happen A6 - Web Site Redevelopment IWMW 2001: Organising Chaos

Implementation

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Kent’s case  Structure and content from in-house  Design and template preparation by consultants  So - how to find the right outside company?

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Criteria  Varied portfolios  Experience with public sector companies  Well-presented corporate sites  Structural design  Interface design  Graphic design

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury First round  30 companies chosen from –Yahoo.co.uk - UK Web Design houses –New Media Age –Internet Magazine –Other Websites –Other design magazines –word of mouth

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury First round (cont.) and invite  Small group of publications team and designers whittled down and chose 9 companies with a reserve list of 7  9 companies invited to tender –brief –covering letter –publications pack –suggested timeline to be followed if successful

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury The brief - important bits  Why Kent needed a new site  Who the site was for  What resources were available to maintain it  What technological aspirations were there (standards, browser compliance, speed)  Corporate style and publications pack  Have a contract - with penalty clauses

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Second round  5 companies accepted and tendered 13 designs in all  45 staff and students invited to come and see - carefully chosen  Evaluation / ratings forms filled in by each  3 companies invited to interview - 2 companies very popular and a third added due to popularity amongst design staff

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Third (and final) round  Three companies invited to present their designs to selection panel of 8 –Senior management (including VC) –Web committee reps –Director of C&DO and Web Editor –University designer –Students’ Union

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury The project  Keymedia chosen  Initial meeting on-site with successful company  Communication via and phone through design stages and then coding  Each stage involved a “signing-off” process

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Staffing  Keymedia –Project manager - liaison role –Designer - initial stages until design signed off –Coder - later stages until end of project –Design and technical managers - checks  In-house –Web Editor - 1 fte –Support -.8 fte < 2.3 fte for final fortnight –University designer - checks

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Content  Re-organisation of current content - lengthy but possible –maintenance issues solved by pigging-backing on paper publications schedules  New content - tricky and time consuming –Who provides this and how often? –Will they meet your deadlines for the re-design? –Can your Web team do it all? Should they?

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Challenges  Designers need to know limitations of Web as well as opportunities  Coders need to have read the brief or at least been told about it  Coders (ideally) should be as good or better than your in-house ones  Project manager needs to know their colleagues and be aware of all issues

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Costs  25k server on special offer (Sun Ultra lots of memory and big disks)  £500 to each company who tendered  Estimates of 8-18k for same brief  Tell them what you have and they will spend it - is this a good idea?  Razorfish - no marketing, no need - average client 100k+ - :-(

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Milestones  Structure finished  Design drafts  Final designs  Coding of a page 1  Templates drafts  Final Templates  Content written  Scripts installed and tested on server  Validation and accessibility checks done  Templates and content merged  User testing  Be prepared to go back to an earlier stage

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Consultation  Strategy - management  Structure - users (as far as possible), management and peers  Interface and graphic design - usability literature, accessibility guidelines and user testing

Management and maintenance

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Those involved...  Content writers  HTML coders  Information managers  Graphic designers / Multimedia  Server maintainers - script installers  Stats producers

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury Low maintenance options  PDFs  Static pages for static content  Databases for retrieval and collection  SSIs - Server Side Includes  Stylesheets  Dreamweaver templates and Library items  Excellent search and replace tools

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury How not to waste time and effort  Use tools that save time  Make sure that all pages have a purpose  Check they meet that purpose  Do not tie your Web site to any particular technology  Try not to duplicate the page length, writing style and graphic design of paper documents - change your content to fit the medium  Prioritise your activities to fit those of University

: 26/06/2001 (c) 2001, The University of Kent at Canterbury High maintenance options  Regularly changing structure  High graphics intensity for text and fonts  Templates that cannot be changed globally once applied  Static pages for regularly changing content  No search and replace tools  Text editor page editing