Rather than doing one giant redesign and launch, at BCIT, we’ve been doing small updates for a while now.
Take our footer for example, I got to update all of them using the CSS a few times and then we decided we wanted to mix up the HTML. Templates and applications were updated with the new code in phases. There were a few different ways the CSS for this could have been managed but I chose to have the old code co-exist with the new in the same style sheet and differentiated the two with IDs (let’s say I called them #footer and #fatfooter).
We’ve phased in #fatfooter slowly across the 46ish templates, 3 CMSs, and only Brandon knows how many applications with their own code that make up our website.
We should be done now and, unintentionally, I made it easy for us to check. A quick search of the server for id=”footer” turned up all the stragglers.
Some of the stragglers had been neglected for a while and turned out to need more than just a new footer…
So what’s languishing in your code that you can delete?
Most companies are fumbling around unsure of how to use this new social media thing to market themselves, and educational institutes are no different. With so much of our target audience using social media it’s particularly important for us.
BCIT’s Marketing and Communications department came to us (Web Services) last year and said – we need to do this, and we need your help. So the two groups came together and What Would You Change? was born.
What Would You Change? is meant to be a place for discussion about change, any kind of change, that you would like to make. There’s a couple tools in place for discussion, recorded videos, short text messages, and a photo mashup generator that lets you paste a picture of what you’d change over the thing you want to change. We’re hoping to integrate with social media better as time goes on – there are plans for Twitter and Facebook app tie-ins and you can already share your creations virtually everywhere :)
Almost a year ago now the BCIT Bookstore let Web Services know that the e-commerce application they used to manage their online sales was upgrading and asked if we’d like to help skin the new site. The department was pretty busy at the time and my Manager said we didn’t have time to help out but put them in contact with me so I could direct them to the style guide and technical guidelines.
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.
There’s only one time where I ever really miss table based layouts: when I’m trying to make a flexible horizontal navigation bar with centred links. Like this or this. *chews on keyboard with frustration*
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.
Google is having this contesty thingy. Which basically requires you to make 10 second (or less) videos of how gMail gets around the world. The idea is for people to get the “Mvelope” from the left to the right side of the screen.
Yesterday after work Alistair filmed videos with my and Kenzie’s help, three are up on youtube now:
Since I got back from @media I’ve been hard at work on a set of guidelines which ideally will one day guide the interaction and styling of all forms on the myriad of BCIT web applications though right now will only be applied to anything in the ‘public web’ look and feel. I don’t think I’ve done this much research since I finished university.
Here’s a bit more information on my quibble with FireFox: the bug report and ensuing argument. Some one who knows what they’re doing should probably read the CSS3 proposals to see if this can be avoided in the future.
Also, sadly, I’m down to my last two chocolates from See’s in San Francisco.
I was in Winnipeg speaking at the CADE/AMTECH Conference last week. The weather was beautiful and I saw an excellent hockey game in which the Manitoba Moose (the Vancouver Canucks’ farm team) played spectacularly only to to be knocked out of the AHL playoffs in a very Canucks way (up 2-0 at the end of the first, lost 2-3 in OT).
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.
Part of my job at BCIT is providing technical support to our content publishing community. These are the people who provide the text to fill the templates we make and keep that text up to date. Most of them aren’t web developers and are a little intimidated by the idea of working on the website.
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.”
When the network goes down the whole department starts acting like school kids when the power goes out. We sit around waiting for the power to come back on or the teachers to tell us to go home and the longer it’s out the more trouble we contemplate causing ;)
