I had a look at the application and decided we could do better than that so I asked my Manager if I could do some follow up and he said it was okay as long as it didn’t interfear with my other work.

I met with the Bookstore intending only to talk about the web app but ended up talking about their static store front just as much. Because of the way their inventory and software work they have not one but three online stores and they have trouble communicating the difference to their customers. They also felt like some of their most important information, like their return policy, was buried.

Skinning the e-commerce sites was relatively easy. The new version of the application was set up logically with good CSS tags and lots of includes. Not only that, the default layout was very easy to transform into the existing template I wanted to mimic.

I started off with this:

And created this:

For the static store front I made some changes to the left navigation based on the most desired pages, created three clear calls to action, placed the catch all action at the bottom of the list instead of the top of the list of options, and separated the two unrelated messages contained in the single page block on the right.

I worked off the side of my desk for a few months on it, meeting with the bookstore a few times, and when I was done they were happy enough with the results to email my manager and thank me in the Campus Update newsletter!

My manger called me into his office to talk about it and I thought, “Uh-oh, what if he’s upset I spent so much time working on this?” But I worried unnecessarily since he proceeded to tell me how it was good interacting design :)

Campus Hub, the third party company who hosts the actual stores liked it so much they’ve been directing people who want to skin their stores to talk to me for advice, and to top it all off, they awarded the store with a “Hubbie” for usability.

A second video of ours was chosen as a featured clip. If you got to the page with the final Gmail behind the scenes video and scroll down to the map, our multi monitor video appears if you click the Vancouver icon.

As part of the Technology Enabled Knowledge (TEK) initiative at BCIT Danny Catt, one of the faculty, was sponsored to take a trip around South America and Antarctica studying local research and responses to sustainability and environmental issues. Throughout the journey he used blogging, digital photography, virtual lecture software, shared file storage space, and of course e-mail to keep in touch which his students and communicate with the world.

Terry Fuller, the instructional development coordinator that was helping Danny with the project submitted a paper to CADE to talk about “Using the Internet to make Meaningful Global Connections in the Classroom.”  I was involved in creating the web page and blog that was the highlight of the project and Terry asked me to talk about the “technical” side of designing the website.

Rather than boring the crowd with PHP, HTML, CSS, CMS and other TLAs. I talked about the rest of the stuff that goes into the design process: user needs, site objectives, functional specifications, content requirements, information architecture, navigation design, visual design, and all that good stuff but for those of you who care the site was driven by Drupal and included a XML driven flash photo gallery, a Google map mashup, and some video and audio recordings, though not as many as we’d hoped – apparently it’s tough to upload media files from the middle of the Amazon – who knew?

The project was a lot of fun and very different my usual daily duties. I’ll post a summary and the slides soon.

Forty percent of our job is providing encouragement.  “Don’t worry, it won’t go up on the website until we release it so you can play around all you want.” “We can always undo the changes if you think you’ve made a mistake.”  I get my best compliments from these kinds of support calls.

This morning on of our clients told me, “You’ve made me feel so much better about all this now, I’m so glad you called.  What a great way to start a Monday.”

What a great way to start a Monday :)

I didn’t actually tell anyone at HOPE that I’d done it that way since it doesn’t effect the way the page looks and I figure they’ll discover it for themselves if it’s useful to them. However, my friend thinks I should tell them so they recognize just how good a job I’m doing for them.

I don’t really feel like I did anything other than my job. Isn’t it my job to do a good job?

In the last two weeks of February, CBC’s IDEAS aired a couple programs on the ideas of Richard Sennett, a sociologist and author who has studied the organization of work. Among other things he suggests the Western world is obsessed not with the idea of craftsmanship but with productivity. In other words: it doesn’t matter how well you do you job – just how quickly.

The speaker at my graduation ceremony spoke at length encouraging us to “strive for excellence” in everything we do. Not just in the work we do but also in our interactions as part of our daily lives. From answering a client’s e-mail to cooking dinner, he urged us to do our best.

Is doing a good job something society has to be told to do now?

The project manager for the project is an Instructional Development Coordinator named Terry Fuller who has done an excellent job pushing the team to give their most while restraining Danny’s overwhelming enthusiasm to keep the project in scope.

She’s asked me to co-present about the project at a conference for distance educators that is happening in Winnipeg in May. I’ve applied for funding to go with her. Our names are already on the website, so I hope I get the funding :)