Redesigning the University Website: Participatory Design Case Study
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The document describes a case study of redesigning a university website using participatory design with faculty. Over a series of workshops from August 2013 to June 2014, faculty were engaged as co-designers to address problems with the current website like poor search and navigation. Workshops covered topics like identifying audiences, organizing content, developing a taxonomy of categories, and designing an information architecture and sitemap. Through activities like creating personas, building with content blocks, and mapping a museum, faculty provided input that resulted in a detailed conceptual design for the new website with broad support.
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Redesigning the University Website: Participatory Design Case Study
- 1. Redesigning the University Website: Participatory Design Case Study Stefanie Panke, Georgia Allen & Dan McAvinchey University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill AACE E-Learn 2014 October 27-30th New Orleans
- 2. University Website Digital (inter)face of the organization Gateway to open access content and education resources
- 3. Challenges Many stakeholders with different interests, backgrounds, motives and varying expertise in web content management
- 4. No clearly right or wrong solutions
- 5. UNC School of Government http://www.sog.unc.edu/
- 6. Problems with Current Website • Poor search results / retrieval options • Cumbersome navigation • Unclear structure, disjointed information • Lack of flexibility from faculty perspective • Dated content, broken links • No integration of blogs / multisite content • Poor performance on mobile devices • Lack of Web Analytics Data
- 7. Faculty as Co-Designers • Paradigm shift from ‘users as subjects’ to ‘users as partners’: Recruiting the faculty as co-designers • Shift from of discussing all that is dissatisfying to building solutions • Rapid prototyping, not in bits and bytes, but with paper, play dough, scissors, glue.
- 8. Goals of the Redesign Process • Engagement: Immerse faculty as deeply as possible in the process to leverage their expertise and experience. • Mutual learning: Create shared understanding of web content management concepts, e.g., content types, dynamic views, categories, filters, … • Innovative thinking: Create space that allows people to be innovative and creative as a foundation for true, substantial change
- 9. Process • August 2013- June 2014 • Two groups with 10, resp. 15 faculty members • Additional consultation meetings • 11 sessions that lasted 90-120 minutes in length • Voluntary participation, no incentive for faculty members • Outcome: Detailed conceptual design with broad organizational buy-in • Participants represented approximately 40 % of the overall faculty in the School
- 10. Workshop Topics • Who is our audience? • How should we structure our content? • What categories will we use to organize the information? • What will the navigation and overall information architecture look like?
- 11. Audience • Goal: Identify potential audiences for the online resource • Exercise: Personas
- 12. Personas • Personas are vivid descriptions of explicitly fictional characters that embody behaviors and motivations that a group of real users might express.
- 13. Structure • Before the workshop: participants email list of audiences • Aggregated list is reviewed in workshop • Additional brainstorming • Groups work on personas • Completed personas are displayed and ranked (voting)
- 14. Exercise • Form groups of 3-5 • Work across specialties • Create different Personas (3-5) • Be as generic as possible, as specific as necessary • Approx. 20-30 minutes
- 15. Present & Vote
- 16. Content • Goal: Identify organizational output, recurring website elements Exercise: Content Toolkit
- 17. Structure • Brainstorm / research comprehensive list of ways in which the organization disseminates information • Assign 1-2 ‘information curators’ per resource type • Create representation of different assets (books, news, user profiles, articles….) using building blocks
- 18. Building Blocks
- 19. Building Blocks
- 20. Exercise • ‘Information Curators describe the content using the building blocks provided • Add additional elements as needed • Time: Approx. 25 minutes
- 21. Results
- 22. Mockups
- 23. Categories Goal: Harmonize different sets of categories to create functional vocabulary • speak to faculty, staff and clients / web users • allow for effective information display in more than one place
- 24. Taxonomy • Tree structure • Strict taxonomy: Every item has one exact place • Related concept: Ontology – multiple, interconnected trees
- 25. Status Quo: Multiple, Different, Overlapping Category Systems
- 27. Categorize Resource Sites: Round 1 • Form 5 Teams (1-2) • Each team categorizes 3 resource sites • Each team assigns 2 categories per resource. • Time: 5 Minutes!
- 28. Categorize Resource Sites: Round 2 • Switch resource sites between team • Assign 2 categories, only if needed • Change and edit as you see fit! • Time: 5 Minutes!
- 29. Review Categories Sticker = Term Part of School of Government Taxonomy
- 30. Taxonomy on the fly Shout out categories, we will document on the fly
- 31. Results
- 32. Navigation Your Mission: We invite you to think about the website as a museum. You are planning an exhibition of the School’s concept, work and content. You are here: School of Government Courts Wing ….
- 33. Think Pair: Museum Map • Form groups of 2-3 • What are the orientation points you want to put on the museum map? • Time: 10 minutes
- 34. Group Exercise: Structure • Work in groups (government vs. courts) • Build a structure for your area of expertise (government / court) • Time: 30 minutes
- 36. Results
- 37. Sitemap
- 38. Summary • The best web content management system can only work effectively if the people who provide the content work with it and not against it. • Participatory design processes take up considerable time and resources, but can lay the foundation for substantial change. • It can make sense to work with different segments of the organization separately.
- 39. Outlook • Completed: Design Concept / Technical Feasibility • Currently: Implementation process • Next spring: Usability tests and faculty review • Anticipated launch: April 2014
Editor's Notes
- The best web content management system can only work effectively if the people who provide the content work with it and not against it and are productive because of it and not despite of it.
- The UNC School of Government’s web presence has evolved considerably over the past several years. Most significantly, its website was transformed from a static site to the content management system Drupal in 2011. As the School had evolved in its understanding and needs of web technology applications, so has the open source community that supports the Drupal CMS: While the School’s multisite environment for the web presence was still based on Drupal 6, Drupal 7 had been widely adopted in the community and Drupal 8 was already looming on the horizon.
- When we first started talking about tackling the design of the School of Government website, Georgia and I shared some memories of other institutional website redesign processes we have been part of – or rather suffered through – in our professional careers. Our shared experience, and I think this is rather common – was that after endless meetings with heated, passionate discussions, usually very little actual change did occur. This is why we decided to shift our focus away from the desired outcome and towards the process. We were looking for an approach to discuss website changes and requirements in a new, more productive way:
- We wanted to create and orchestrate a process that was engaging, fostered mutual learning and allowed for innovative thinking to take place so that we could lay the foundation for true, substantial change. For instance, instead of describing how their content should best be structured, we asked them to use glue sticks and stickers and show us.
- The first website workshop explored the School of Government website from the perspective of the external visitors. We used the ‘personas technique’ to create and share narratives. The goal was to enter into a discussion about the website users’ needs, behaviors, and preferences. POLL: Who has used personas before? Personas are vivid descriptions of explicitly fictional characters that embody behaviors and motivations that a group of real users might express. Personas are a great method to start a conversation. Communicate information about users to development team Engage diverse groups of project stakeholders Bring abstract target group information to life Foster discussion of goals and values Identify and challenge assumptions
- For IT, faculty member are the clients. You are the target audience of our instructional design and web application development services. When it comes to online resources, we rely on faculty to have an informed understanding of their clientele. We realize that you do not have a complete, comprehensive picture, but you do have regular interactions on the phone, in the classroom, during conferences, or in the hallway.
- During the second workshop, we discussed the website content. The goal was to leverage content types to display the content in more than one place and more than one way. During the workshop, we brainstormed different types of resources relevant to the organization (e.g., articles, books, reports, faculty profiles, news, events, courses…). We then used visual building blocks to represent each content type.
- I have designed over 40 different building blocks
- I have designed over 40 different building blocks
- The School has a total of 66 resource sites, 44 of which are specific to local government. We have heard considerable complaints that the current website and course categories do not work very well. Here is your chance to change that.
- Review Mindmaps / Index Cards Put a sticker on every category you want to see as part of a School of Government Taxonomy Use small colorful stickers for subcategories Use large blue stickers for main categories Time: 20 Minutes
- The concept of the School – what we are about, the work that we do, and the content that we offer. The exercises will focus on 2 areas 1.‘Museum Lobby’ 2. Museum Floor Plan Who are we? What do we do? How do we organize our work? What are our areas of specialty? Who is affiliated with us? What is our output (applied research, teaching, advising?) Why are we part of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, a research university? How does the MPA fit?
- What will you put in the flyer that visitors hold in their hands as they navigate your museum space? What type of museum is this? What are the main areas of its collection – e.g., government wing, courts wing, MPA floor? Does the museum have any highlights or special exhibitions? What are the museum’s affiliations? Why is this museum part of the University of North Carolina – does this relationship matter? Who are we? What do we do? How do we organize our work? What are our areas of specialty? Who is affiliated with us? What is our output (applied research, teaching, advising?) Why are we part of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, a research university? How does the MPA fit?
- Each Building Block represents content – either a resource site, or other site element, like the publications or course catalogue or tools – for example LRS or C-CAT, centers like the CPT and EFC, or initiatives. The plates represent main gateways or portals (rooms of your exhibition space). How do you get from one information item to another? How do they relate to one another? Can we form larger, meaningful groups of items?
- Let’s bring it together! Use this poster and the sticky notes to write down the elements we need to display in the lobby to communicate the structure that you have created. (20 minutes)
- Finally, I don’t want to come across as overly critical of standardized, multiple choice testing – in fact, this is really not my area of expertise. I completed my education up to my PhD in Germany, back ‘in the good old days’, prior to Bologna Reform. Thinking back on my personal educational experience, I have to say that the only standardized multiple choice quiz I ever took was the theoretical part of my driver’s license test. And it might be worth mentioning that I passed that one with flying colors. However, I did fail the practical part the first time around. And, while on second try I eventually did get my permit, I still remember the tester saying, ‘Young lady, I would never let you drive my car’.