There’s one more item to add to the list of completed campus renovations for the year – the campus Web site.
An updated main Web site for the campus debuted online
March 24. A new format categorizes the site’s content by type of information and by user group to help visitors navigate and find information more quickly. The new site also offers enhanced search features and navigational tools as well as components that acquaint site visitors with the campus, the university and the surrounding community.
Kip Knox, director of the Office of Web Services, led the redesign project team, which included staff members from the Office of Publications and Marketing, the News Bureau and several students.
The new site’s construction and content is entirely inspired by the expressed needs of users, Knox said.
"We redid the site because we knew we could serve our users better," Knox said. "We knew that our current students, faculty and staff had been raising complaints and concerns about the old site for a long time. The site is an important recruitment vehicle for prospective students, faculty and businesses for the research park. And the site needed to do a better job of representing the campus."
Users expect the campus Web site to be dynamic and constantly evolving, just like the campus itself, and they had complained that the old site appeared dated and was too static, Knox said.
Accordingly, the new site has features that are refreshed on a weekly or daily basis, such as news and announcements and an easier-to-use events calendar.
The new "Explore Illinois" feature acquaints users with various facets of the Urbana campus, such as recreational opportunities, campus landmarks and campus culture. A collection of thumbnail photographs at the top of the home page that links to "Explore Illinois" content will change regularly, offering a fresh look to the page and ongoing opportunities for users to enrich their knowledge of the university. The new site also incorporates new dynamic maps to help visitors and new students find their way around campus.
A drop-down "quick links" menu allows users to link directly to popular destinations such as course registration, computing support and Webmail.
To discern users’ likes and dislikes about the previous campus site, the project team gathered feedback from a broad spectrum of the campus community through interviews, online surveys and analyses of site visitors’ e-mailed comments.
In an online survey conducted during May 2002, more than 800 people, 546 of them students, offered their opinions and suggested improvements about the previous site. Respondents’ primary complaint was that the site’s structure was confusing and hampered their efforts to locate information. Participants also were very unhappy with the Web search tool.
However, users "were devoted" to the site’s weather feature, Knox said.
Input from students as users and as design team members was integral to developing a site that fit their needs, Knox said.
Students indicated that they wanted the site to support their academic success by giving them quick access to information and resources like courses and registration, financial aid and scholarships. They also wanted a site that would help them make sense of the university as a large, complex institution.
Users’ expectations about how the page should appear and function presented the project team with a challenging task: Creating a replacement that would epitomize the university’s core mission and values and convey respect for tradition yet have a contemporary appearance. The new page also needed to be striking and distinctive to differentiate the Illinois site from those of other universities.
Field tests and usability tests with users throughout the campus community helped the team refine the site’s format, tools and editorial content. To ensure the site’s accessibility to special-needs users such as people with visual impairments, Jim Wilson, Web Services associate director and lead programmer, and designer Michele Plante, a project team member from the Office of Publications and Marketing, collaborated with Jon Gunderson in the Division of Rehabilitation Education Services.
A beta (test) version of the redesigned site was launched Dec. 30 to determine if the new structure and content met user needs and to uncover where additional alterations might be needed. Based upon user feedback during the beta testing, the design team modified the page’s coloration, discovered some outdated content that needed revisions and developed an inclusive page on international programs and services.
Although the new site is now online, the redesign project is far from over.
"We’ve redone the core of the site, but there are lots of pieces that we have yet to do," Knox said. "We have to take this core and build upon it by revising content such as pages for official campus publications and services that people use. We also have an ongoing effort to keep the new site up
to date."