At Michigan State University, Infrastructure Planning and Facilities spent more than a year overhauling its online presence to create a more unified, easy-to-use experience for customers. The Communications team consolidated service information that had been spread across disparate websites. Staff met with individual campus customers to usability-test the site before its launch. Notable enhancements to the finished product include an alerts feed to notify the occupants of work underway in their buildings, a comprehensive service guide that is sortable by category and searchable by keyword, an intranet for employees, and a responsive design so the site functions seamlessly across multiple devices.
Introduction to Multilingual Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
Editor's Notes
Talk about keyword searches: key shop. Informed decisions about home page content.
87% of traffic immediately left the home page.
On the home page of the old site, 74% of traffic was clicking on the home page link, which did absolutely nothing and showed no new content since they simply did not know what else to click.
Operations side of U has particularly complicated organizational chart.
Disregarded the old site structure and grouped the cards logically as a customer might look for information.
Examples:
Events support in our unit is housed in Custodial Services.
If you need your TV/projector mounted, call Metal Services.
THE POINT: Customers should not need to know. They just need to trust they can get the service provided.
Explain expectations early so as not to run into a breaker late on in the process. Make sure they are aware of the framework you’re working in.
Beware of territorial issues. Learn where stakeholders are coming from and listen to their concerns. Make compromises without degrading usability.
Overcommunicate
We considered and implemented the feedback we got from these tests: renaming because terms were confusing, reorganizing parts of the site, etc.
Link to wireframes:
Internet: http://www.hollycebalentine.com/mockflow/publicsite/#/page=af151446191fedd7b77ba42a23e7cab3
File: file:///X:/DKT/Communications/Website/Redesign%20materials/Usability%20tests/Mockflow%20wireframes/Physical%20Plant%20website%20redesign/index.html#/page=af151446191fedd7b77ba42a23e7cab3
Expect unit to reorganize midstream. Semi-joking.
Plan ahead to prevent a massive heart attack.
You might not get thrown into a top-level reorganization, but down the line you will probably need to quickly add new content areas to your site. Prepare for future development during the initial construction and as you organize present content.
The site was not 100% perfect. The site is never done. Don’t let perfect get in the way of progress.
Remember to celebrate, both small successes along the way and a big one after launch.
Make an audit schedule! Assign a responsible party to every page of the website to review at least quarterly (more frequently as needed)
Continue keeping customer perspective at the forefront. You don’t need to add a page or section to the website or make a change because one internal stakeholder asked for it.
IPF’s site helped set ‘responsive design’ standards for all of Michigan State University.
Seen as leader on campus (IT Services wanted to mimic service guide)
700+ pages on the site and 400+ additional files (about 200 comprise www.msu.edu)
Drop-off rate from the home page decreased from 87% to 46.7% (40.3% decrease) You want to aim to have it between 25 and 3%. Average is 50 to 60%.
