Barcelona Digital Designers: Portfolio Workshop DeckAdam Sadowski
This is an export of a presentation given at the latest workshop hosted by the Barcelona Digital Designers group. We developed this deck to communicate portfolio best practices based on our experiences in the design industry.
The workshop began with the following presentation and ended with live portfolio reviews from the audience (as well as some examples found online).
Although some of the content seems super obvious, many designers continue to exclude basic information that can help get them more work. We hope beginners and veterans alike will find it useful!
Credits:
Adam Sadowski
Dario Stefanutto
Bart Goselink
If you’re new to web design, you may find yourself intimidated how complex it can be creating assets for the online paradigm. We will explore how to use storyboards to plan animated functionality, how to use wireframes to create mobile-friendly designs and help guide and inform your final design, and how to use mood boards to help determine color, texture, and the overall look and feel of online communications. We’ll discuss how to properly start an online design project to help give you a launching point and to help save valuable time and resources by nailing down the basic elements of your assets before you even begin initial design comps.
Barcelona Digital Designers: Portfolio Workshop DeckAdam Sadowski
This is an export of a presentation given at the latest workshop hosted by the Barcelona Digital Designers group. We developed this deck to communicate portfolio best practices based on our experiences in the design industry.
The workshop began with the following presentation and ended with live portfolio reviews from the audience (as well as some examples found online).
Although some of the content seems super obvious, many designers continue to exclude basic information that can help get them more work. We hope beginners and veterans alike will find it useful!
Credits:
Adam Sadowski
Dario Stefanutto
Bart Goselink
If you’re new to web design, you may find yourself intimidated how complex it can be creating assets for the online paradigm. We will explore how to use storyboards to plan animated functionality, how to use wireframes to create mobile-friendly designs and help guide and inform your final design, and how to use mood boards to help determine color, texture, and the overall look and feel of online communications. We’ll discuss how to properly start an online design project to help give you a launching point and to help save valuable time and resources by nailing down the basic elements of your assets before you even begin initial design comps.
BadAss: Making Search Awesome - Jonti Bolles | SearchHOUSearchHOU
Jonti Bolles will provide an overview of lessons from "BadAss: Making Users Awesome" published by Kathy Sierra and how it relates to your online marketing, audience targeting and SEO.
Jonti is the owner of White Hat Ops, a local search engine marketing agency focused on sustainable and ethical results for their clients.
Having a website is vital in this digital age. But how important is the design of you site, what can you do to make you website more current. This presentation takes you through all the aspects of designing a website.
Are you ready to fire your current business website because it’s not performing the way you think it should? Or, maybe you just want to see if you can get more out of it (better return on investment). Even if you don’t have a website yet, this workshop is for you!
In this workshop for small business owners, we will cover important elements every website needs to be powerful. We will also discuss how to avoid the common pitfalls and how to correct them if you have fallen into them. There will be many examples and everyone should be able to leave with actionable items they can put to work right away!
To thrive in the mobile world speed is essential. This presentation urges more attention to the potential Achilles' heel of responsive design websites... speed. Open the slides to compare the speed differences on higher education websites... and review once again the value of major content reduction in the mobile world.
About responsive design and its benefits, and how it affects search engine optimization (SEO). By Megan Horn, Marketing Specialist at Far Reach in Cedar Falls, Iowa at the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance's Business Education Series on 10/8/13. http://www.farreachinc.com
How to Become a Kids Developer: Story by GoKids! | Kirill LazackovichJessica Tams
Delivered at Casual Connect Asia 2017. How do you become a kids app developer? Hear a story about two non-developers who started creating kids apps as a side project and became successful. They will share their secrets, vision and statistics.
Maintaining the competitive edge in the digital age: Crafted IoD presentationCrafted
Our businesses operate in a world in which Google handles 100 billion searches every month, half of Britain owns a smartphone and the average UK resident spends nine hours each day glued to a screen. We are trading in the digital age, and it is vital to understand how to get the most from online technologies in order to compete.
Measurable, scalable and highly-targeted, effective digital marketing can help businesses sell more and better engage with customers. But, with so many channels available, how do you determine which outlets will work best for your business, and how do you make the most of the tools you already have? In this presentation, experts from integrated digital agency Crafted will take you through the digital journey, helping you to focus on the channels that can deliver real ROI for your business to ensure that you maintain the competitive edge in the online era.
The presentation will explore:
1) Crafting your digital strategy – Tom Gillman, Business Development Director, will explain the basics of formulating a digital marketing strategy, help you define your objectives and understand your current positioning
2) Increasing web sales and enquires – Barnie Mills, Head of Creative, will highlight design considerations for more successful websites and outline helpful tweaks to boost the performance of your existing site
3) Influencing customers in the digital age – Ian Miller, Search Director, will explore ways to blend traditional and online PR to resonate with your audience and generate better business results
The Right Way to Apply Game Thinking in Consumer AppsRicardo Leon
Games can extend far beyond entertainment to encourage a desire behavior and reach an objective. What ever is your objective, learn to integrate game thinking in a consumer app.
Get ready to roll your sleeves to learn and experience the fundamentals of game design. We have heard about the explosive use of game techniques to engage users in new and different ways. However, game design is more than sticking points, leaderboards, and badges on your application to engage your users. In this workshop, you will learn the most important elements of game thinking and mechanics, apply them through creative exercises, and get examples of successful implementations. Be ready to participate and have fun! (modev East 2013. McClean, Virginia)
BadAss: Making Search Awesome - Jonti Bolles | SearchHOUSearchHOU
Jonti Bolles will provide an overview of lessons from "BadAss: Making Users Awesome" published by Kathy Sierra and how it relates to your online marketing, audience targeting and SEO.
Jonti is the owner of White Hat Ops, a local search engine marketing agency focused on sustainable and ethical results for their clients.
Having a website is vital in this digital age. But how important is the design of you site, what can you do to make you website more current. This presentation takes you through all the aspects of designing a website.
Are you ready to fire your current business website because it’s not performing the way you think it should? Or, maybe you just want to see if you can get more out of it (better return on investment). Even if you don’t have a website yet, this workshop is for you!
In this workshop for small business owners, we will cover important elements every website needs to be powerful. We will also discuss how to avoid the common pitfalls and how to correct them if you have fallen into them. There will be many examples and everyone should be able to leave with actionable items they can put to work right away!
To thrive in the mobile world speed is essential. This presentation urges more attention to the potential Achilles' heel of responsive design websites... speed. Open the slides to compare the speed differences on higher education websites... and review once again the value of major content reduction in the mobile world.
About responsive design and its benefits, and how it affects search engine optimization (SEO). By Megan Horn, Marketing Specialist at Far Reach in Cedar Falls, Iowa at the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance's Business Education Series on 10/8/13. http://www.farreachinc.com
How to Become a Kids Developer: Story by GoKids! | Kirill LazackovichJessica Tams
Delivered at Casual Connect Asia 2017. How do you become a kids app developer? Hear a story about two non-developers who started creating kids apps as a side project and became successful. They will share their secrets, vision and statistics.
Maintaining the competitive edge in the digital age: Crafted IoD presentationCrafted
Our businesses operate in a world in which Google handles 100 billion searches every month, half of Britain owns a smartphone and the average UK resident spends nine hours each day glued to a screen. We are trading in the digital age, and it is vital to understand how to get the most from online technologies in order to compete.
Measurable, scalable and highly-targeted, effective digital marketing can help businesses sell more and better engage with customers. But, with so many channels available, how do you determine which outlets will work best for your business, and how do you make the most of the tools you already have? In this presentation, experts from integrated digital agency Crafted will take you through the digital journey, helping you to focus on the channels that can deliver real ROI for your business to ensure that you maintain the competitive edge in the online era.
The presentation will explore:
1) Crafting your digital strategy – Tom Gillman, Business Development Director, will explain the basics of formulating a digital marketing strategy, help you define your objectives and understand your current positioning
2) Increasing web sales and enquires – Barnie Mills, Head of Creative, will highlight design considerations for more successful websites and outline helpful tweaks to boost the performance of your existing site
3) Influencing customers in the digital age – Ian Miller, Search Director, will explore ways to blend traditional and online PR to resonate with your audience and generate better business results
The Right Way to Apply Game Thinking in Consumer AppsRicardo Leon
Games can extend far beyond entertainment to encourage a desire behavior and reach an objective. What ever is your objective, learn to integrate game thinking in a consumer app.
Get ready to roll your sleeves to learn and experience the fundamentals of game design. We have heard about the explosive use of game techniques to engage users in new and different ways. However, game design is more than sticking points, leaderboards, and badges on your application to engage your users. In this workshop, you will learn the most important elements of game thinking and mechanics, apply them through creative exercises, and get examples of successful implementations. Be ready to participate and have fun! (modev East 2013. McClean, Virginia)
Future trends in social media #rethinkingmarketing #dagmar /Starcom Sindre HolmeDagmar
Dagmar #rethinkingmarketing asiakasseminaari. Starcomin Sindre Holme aiheena Future trends in social media. Creativity doesn´t have to be about fancy campaigns. People care about other people.
History and future of social media. By: @AhmedBasyouney Ahmed Basyouney
History and future of social media is the key to understand the market and expect where's the social network going to improve your skills and outcome from your work as a social media guy.
You Find me on:
- http://eg.linkedin.com/in/ahmedbasyouney
- https://twitter.com/Ahmedbasyouney
- http://instagram.com/ahmedbasyouney
- https://www.facebook.com/ahmed.basyouney.1
What will the future of social media look like? Our world is increasingly digital, and our lives become more connected each day. Advances in areas such as social media and mobile technology are changing the ways we interact with our friends and family, but also with brands and organisations. They’re changing the way we do business too, and that change is accelerating at an ever-increasing rate. As a consequence, riding the wave of change and trends is becoming a critical part of on-going business success. To that end, this document explores some of the key themes that we believe will shape the digital world over the course of the coming months.
We're big fans of Drupal right now and find the tools available, and the modular functionality, to be quite effective. Questions? Ideas? Let's connect over your project.
Why Design Matters: How to Make Your Website Worth a Million VisitsSchoolwires, Inc.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a stunning K-12 website design is worth a million visits. Good design goes beyond colors and logos. It takes your district's goals, usability needs, and content layout into consideration. When Wylie Independent School District (TX) was ready for a website refresh, they looked for a solution that had it all. Their journey of finding Schoolwires, creating a Made-To-Order design, and increasing community engagement is an achievement they love to share with peers from other districts.
Startups, get the basics on how to launch your marketing efforts with tips on branding and design, content, websites, email marketing and social media!
Make Me a Match: Revamping Online Readers Advisory at the Iowa City Public Li...Melody Dworak
What does Readers Advisory look like at a virtual branch library? Iowa City Public Library staff have been mulling that question over since 2014. After launching its new website in 2017, a committee formed to tackle redesigning its Staff Picks blog into a dynamic experience where readers can "pick their pleasure" by following the
recommendations of library staff who love the same kind of entertainment they do. The new staff profiles allow readers to get to know their librarians in a friendly and personal way. And book covers abound! Patrons get a visually attractive experience as they explore what staff are reading and recommending. Other problems solved include reducing the amount of time library staff needed to curate content and keeping recommendations freshly discoverable. The newly designed lists also allow for easily printable documents for hunting books down on the shelves. The new Staff Picks web presence can be found at www.icpl.org/picks.
Technology—websites
Public Services—Readers Advisory
This is the presentation I gave at the Sleek Marketing conference on 05/05/15. I spoke about current trends in web design, responsive design, and search engine optimization.
How to Improve Usability and Drive Productivity in SharePoint & Office 365James Wright
SharePoint is a place for businesses to store, collaborate, and share content and documents throughout your organization. SharePoint out-of-the-box has its share of usability challenges, which in turn can cause user adoption and productivity to suffer. Those challenges can easily be re mediated by implementing a few easy tips and tricks.
Join Intlock and Wendy Neal to learn how to drive greater user adoption and productivity by optimizing the SharePoint end user experience.
During this webcast, we will cover:
• What are some of the current usability challenges in SharePoint?
• How to overcome the usability and productivity challenges
• Top usability tips for SharePoint
• Top Metrics to use to drive usability and productivity in SharePoint
About Wendy Neal:
Wendy Neal is a .NET SharePoint Developer for DMI and a founding partner and community representative for SharePoint-Community.net. A regular speaker at industry and user group events, she is also a regular contributor for CMSWire.com and discusses all things SharePoint (and sometimes bacon) on Twitter and her blog. While Wendy is a developer at heart, she also focuses on usability, branding, evangelism, user adoption, training, and empowering power users to build their own solutions.
Don't Design Websites. Design Web SYSTEMS! (BADCamp 2011)Four Kitchens
This presentation was given at BADCamp by Todd Nienkerk of Four Kitchens (October 23, 2011)
For more Four Kitchens presentations, please visit http://fourkitchens.com/presentations
Rethinking UX Research - Design4Drupal 2014 keynote presentationPerfetti Media
How do you really know what your users want? How do you ensure your designs work for your prospects and customers? How can you be confident that your design changes improve your site?
There are those that believe that user research must be a complex and scientific process that takes a lot of time, money, and resources. However, in the real world, most designers and developers don't have the luxury to spend weeks and months on their user research.
It's possible to get useful results without the time-consuming expense of traditional user research methods. In this presentation, Christine Perfetti will share proven strategies and techniques for successfully integrating UX research into your process. You'll learn how to answer essential design questions using methods that take only a day—and sometimes only 10 minutes!
NISO Two Day Virtual Conference:
Using the Web as an E-Content Distribution Platform:
Challenges and Opportunities
Oct 21-22, 2014
Jeff Penka, Director of Channel and Product Development, Zepheira
SEMPO KC Presentation - It May Have to Be YouBrody Dorland
In late October 2016, I had the opportunity to present on the topic of "Building a Better Process" for the Kansas City Chapter of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO). With a room evenly split between paid and organic search marketing pros, it was a bit of a challenge for me to put my SEO hat back on (it's been a while) and think about the process that these folks execute every day.
Thankfully, the search marketing world has converged and silo walls are being torn down. The days of a "search team" or "the guy who does search" are numbered. In many organizations, search is an integrated part of the strategic conversation and the practices of keyword research and optimization are becoming important components of the content process.
That being said, there's more work to be done. Many companies aren't there yet. Perhaps those companies just need to understand why they should be making search marketing a bigger priority. And perhaps they need some guidance as to how to integrate search marketing practices into their current process. That's my focus with this presentation. Enjoy!
In this presentation, done for <em>Planning and Managing Drupal Projects</em>, I walk listeners through the typical lifecycle of a Drupal project. I also talk about:
• How to help clients understand Drupal without resorting to DrupalSpeak (and confusing the heck out of them)
• How to get the information you need to put together a strong proposal
• Strategies for walking clients through the Drupal design and implementation process
• Some common red flags to look out for when talking to prospects.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Generating a custom Ruby SDK for your web service or Rails API using Smithyg2nightmarescribd
Have you ever wanted a Ruby client API to communicate with your web service? Smithy is a protocol-agnostic language for defining services and SDKs. Smithy Ruby is an implementation of Smithy that generates a Ruby SDK using a Smithy model. In this talk, we will explore Smithy and Smithy Ruby to learn how to generate custom feature-rich SDKs that can communicate with any web service, such as a Rails JSON API.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
Encryption in Microsoft 365 - ExpertsLive Netherlands 2024Albert Hoitingh
In this session I delve into the encryption technology used in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview. Including the concepts of Customer Key and Double Key Encryption.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
2. Why a site redesign?
• Getting dated
• Increase visual elements
• Not a collaborative space
• Content becoming static
• Opportunities for interaction
3.
4.
5.
6. Wishes and Limitations
• More graphics!
• New book spotlight
• Get all involved
• Build community
• Lack of tech knowledge
• Small, SMALL staff
• Budget
• Time
7. Solution?
• YourLibrarySite.com – Eugene, OR
• Site built in Drupal 6
• 15 months start to finish
• Work done via Skype
• Move from package -> Custom Design
8. Do you have a mission statement? If so,
what is it? How well does this mission
statement reflect what your company is all
about?
What are the top 3 values that you deliver or
stand for? Please briefly explain what your
organization does to deliver or represent
those values.
What are the top 3 things your target
audience will likely want to do when visiting
your website?
Imagine your new website. What three
words best describe the look and feel?
Design Questionnaire
16. Deep Links to Catalog for Search Widget
Links need to follow this format:
Title search for “Steven Holl”
17. Drupal…it’s simple
• Screencast tutorials from admin interface
• Ease of editing/creating by ALL
• Flexible – “promos” and mashups
Image: freedigitalphotos.net
Introduce, briefly describe what I’m talking about…website redesign in a small academic library – via contracting it out.
Old site only had an image on the home page and on the page about the history of the library…. Otherwise no graphics other than in the header. Could not show off our collection, services, or interact with our patrons meaningfully.
Only one person with any html/css/javascript/website creation experience. Makes for a complete lack of collaboration. Changes had to be handed up to director and then out to me. Time-consuming, dificult – result was that content became static. Website more of a historical document with links to resources. Old site hand-coded using css, html, and tables. Made any kind of radical change or introduction of significant new material next to impossible without a total overhaul.
Not only interactions between librarians was desired – but also ways to interact with our patrons. Looking at chat reference for a couple of years,
Old site – perfectly adequate for our needs. Launched in 2003 – before that, site was a simple image map with 5 or 6 links that each went to one page with no further links. We had also moved over to ezproxy and away from individual username/password for each database. So this was a big improvement over the former situation.
What we liked: simple, easy to navigate, all content above the fold.
Databases page – got increasingly unpleasant to navigate as more resources were added. Couldn’t offer too much description because of table layout easily looking too “busy.” No branding or logos to help students remember and make connections about databases.
So…what WAS important to us as we thought about a new site?
This is Woodbury. The library was a church built in 1950 with the stain glass, tile, and original light fixtures all retained. The university has a large number of programs in design fields, and we felt our website should reflect that and also take more of a cutting edge design approach to more easily appeal to and appear relevant to our students.
When we sat down to look at the issue, we knew what we wanted… but unfortunately, we also knew (or, er, I knew) that we couldn’t do it effectively in-house. I’d be on my own completely with the redesign – as we had 3 full-time and one half-time librarian at the time we began the process (now up to 4 FT and 1 half-time). In addition to systems activities, I teach 2 classes per semester (info lit – credit-bearing course), work about 25% of my hours on the reference desk, collection development for animation, anthro, psych, communication, graphic design, fashion design, and communication; and handle instructional requests for those departments as well, serve on 5 faculty committees, etc. I had to be up-front with the library director and tell her immediately that I didn’t feel capable of handling the redesign myself and that I thought we should contract it out. – but budget was an issue….
What did we find? After exploring some going rates in the market with independent contractors, we heard about a webinar through Califa being put on by Craftyspace/yourLibrarySite. They were building sites (mostly public libs at that point) in Drupal 6. (Content management system – allows for site to be updated and maintained and have content created via a straightforward interface that does not require knowledge of html). The site could have been done much more quickly….probably at least 4 months faster – but we were slow. Difficult to get times for all to meet – particularly as work began over summer of 2009 and everyone takes vacations in summer.
Worked with CS via Skype and conference calls. Periodically we involved all librarians, but many were just with me or just with the director and I and CS.
Initially, we signed on for a package subscription (where we were going to have them adapt one of 3 basic site designs to fit our needs – which would have cost just under $9000 at the time).
However, it eventually became apparent that we needed to move to a custom design – getting all to understand that we couldn’t just find some websites online we liked and say, “we want you to do THIS like university ABC, and THIS like university DEF, and we like this other functionality from university ZZZ” was difficult. So, we moved out of the package idea and into custom development – which we normally would not have been able to afford, but they were finishing up a design with their first academic library client, who agreed to let us reap the rewards of the research and development done by CS programmers. So, we had a custom site…sort of. The price break did enable us to explore some additional functionality that required extra programming time – which I’ll show you when you see the site….
As for the process…once all contracts had been signed, we started with a design questionnaire. Here are a few sample questions from it.
3 top values: Academic excellence; quality resources; friendly, helpful customer service
Top 3 things target audience will probably want: 1 - library online catalog access; 2- database (article research) access; 3 - information
about services such as hours, borrowing, FAQ.
3 words to describe look/feel: clean, friendly, good sense of design
We didn’t really have a logo, but it was requested by YLS, so we commissioned a member of the graphic design faculty to design a logo for us in summer of 2009. After some feedback on our part, we had these 4 logos to choose from (only colors differed). We went with #3. The W is part of the Woodbury logo on signage on campus, and the colors reflected the idea of environmental sustainability to us, which is an important principle on our campus and in our curriculum.
Our initial planning involved librarian meetings where we all viewed other library websites and made decisions about how we might want to structure our navigation. We took a stab at some ideas for extra, more interactive content we’d also be interested in adding to the home page.
YLS set up some spreadsheets in Google Docs which were shared between their programmers, me, and the project manager. It was a great way to clearly communicate changes to everyone at once. This is just one part of the larger sheet…describing part of how we wanted our searchbox widget to work – which is a hard-coded widget on the home page allowing for direct catalog searching, easy navigation to databases, subject research guides, google scholar, and a site search. There are also spreadsheets for the horizontal and left navigation bars, the lefthand “how do I?” drop down menus, and links placed in the header and footer. As I made changes, I highlighted them in various colors. We were also able to ask and answer questions of each other directly in these documents.
Once the basic navigation and additional functionality of the home page was somewhat decided upon, the user interface designer worked with us to develop a wireframe for the home page. We reviewed this and revised it during an all-librarian and Craftyspace Skype meeting – complete with file sharing. At this point, not all programming or content decisions were worked out at ALL – but this allowed YLS to generate enough info for the project to be referred to the graphic designer….. Who, in consult with us (and images we sent along), developed 3 possible designs…
These are the three designs. At this stage, we were able to pick and choose elements from different designs, but we essentially went with the one in the middle. Now it was starting to come together…. In the meantime, we wanted to work on some additional content and services to have ready to go when our new website was completed… and to get our collective feet wet in terms of Web 2.0 functionality.
One of the best decisions we made was to purchase an instance of libguides in November of 2009. We did staff training via a dedicated webinar in December, right before break, and then we went off and worked on libguides sort of at leisure, since we didn’t really plan on a widespread launch of them until our new site launched. Everyone was able to experience using a CMS at his/her own pace. The results were empowering. I also did some short training sessions with individual librarians who wanted to get a bit fancier.
We also launched library facebook and twitter sites (which, I’ll admit, I need to work a bit harder with), and we planned for an ipad project – which came to fruition at the beginning of this past summer. – wanted something to search stacks, provide autonomy and interactivity for students – and not take up precious space. We had to have engineers design a prototype mount, because when we started this project, no such product existed – as ipads were not being used by anyone else in this way. All of these new services and products helped prepare us as we started changing our image towards the more cutting edge – and got librarians more comfortable with new technology in advance of the website launch. We started editing and adding content in April, 2010 – and went live on july 19, 2010.
We launched on July 19, 2010 – hosted by CS/YLS. Initially we thought we’d host ourselves, but Drupal requires a server capable of running MySQL So, our IT department got involved with a site redirect from the old site to the new address – which redirects to the YLS servers.
Show site! Spotlight a few things: chat widget, carousel (required programming expense), database page (with a custom interface..ditto), rss feeds, twitter (yahoo pipes), map, hours php script in header.
What didn’t’ we get? Additional page templates beyond basic, the home page, and the database page; carousel not all the way to where we want it, staff directory page had to be done in html and css by us – as did the style guides because the wysiwyg editor would not retain formatting correctly.
A note about the search widget and SIRSI… this was challenging. Initially we built what we thought were durable URLs for building catalog searches, but they only worked when there was a good match. We would get a #cs not defined error sometimes, and it was off-putting to patrons. So, we did a little more sleuthing, and got a little more help from sirsi, and discovered we needed to pass along information about the names of the indexed fields used in each search. These longer links correctly communicate how the search should behave, and have been working with no errors now.
How did it go? It was simple to edit and create content. YLS provided us with screencasts – links embedded in the admin interface, but also accessible via a youtube channel. The site is very flexible – allowing for easy additions of not just simple text and image content, but also mashups, and special promo boxes that allow for insertion of javascript and html .
Show back end.
What did people think? Here’s a wordle based on all of their feedback via email and our feedback form on the new site.