After months of work the new Computing & Information Technology (C&IT) (opens new window) is now live. This was no small project, it included consolidating seven separate sites and hundreds of active pages.

C&IT came to us with the goal of unifying their web presence. They had multiple sites run by various people with no central control. We took their site from the ground up and developed a navigation that makes their primary audience (current student, faculty and staff) successful. We went from their overgrown audience based menu to a clear and concise task based menu. Their main sections are driven by the service the user is having an issue with regardless of their user type.

System Status

Another large portion of the site has to do with the System Status page (opens new window). This shows which university systems are running and which ones are having issues. You can see below on the left is the old screen and the right is the new. Although the old one you could see a lot of green the new one gets the point across without screaming at the user. In addition there is now a slimmed down mobile view and an auto refresh option for the system status addicts.

Site Feedback

We also implemented a site wide feedback button. It is located on the right side of ever page. When clicked it gives the user the ability to share an idea, complain or post a problem they encountered. The idea is to make C&IT as open as possible so they can react and gain insight from the campus community. So far the feedback has been well received and we will be making a few tweaks in the near future based on it.

Overall

The new site overall is a step in the right direction. Centralizing all the sites into one domain and menu is key to better servicing the campus. There are a few areas that were cut out of the launch because of timing but we are looking to launch them in the next few weeks. For example the popular pages area is hard coded for the moment but is all setup to pull from the top 5 pages via Google Analytics API. Another is revamping the faculty/staff directory to be more fluid and centralized from a design and usability standpoint.

Check out the new site at http://computing.wayne.edu/ (opens new window)

Vote for it on .eduGuru at http://www.edustyle.net/site.php?site=3898 (opens new window)