Campus input sought; survey guides changes

Web users, you were heard this summer. Since then, the campus home page team has been brainstorming how to incorporate your ideas into a better Web presence. Now it's time for more feedback.

The end result will be a new and improved UC Davis home page making its debut the beginning of February.

The home page and pages most closely associated with it will be more logically organized, offer better navigation among the pages and include the information users said they wanted to find. Importantly, the newly redesigned site will comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), so that people with little or no vision can access information about UC Davis.

Campus Web users are invited to view the prototype redesign and provide feedback at http://redesign.ucdavis.edu/.

"We've tried very hard to create a home page that is user friendly," said Lisa Lapin, assistant vice chancellor for University Communications. "This effort is a result of intensive research. We hope Web users will find it easier to locate what they want."

The redesign will incorporate nearly 50 pages at the top level of the UC Davis Web site. Plans call for other high-level campus Web sites to eventually be updated, said Craig Farris, the webmaster in University Communications.

University Communications will be working with Informational and Educational Technology to create templates that can be used by campus Web site creators. These templates will offer best technical practices, including how to comply with ADA requirements, and simple design and content standards.

Because it had been more than six years since the homepage was last redesigned, Lapin asked a 17-person Web Strategy Committee to pull together a plan involving people throughout the campus.

The new top-level pages are based on input from that committee, as well as from key constituents on campus and off.

"This little piece of electronic real estate has to do a lot of heavy lifting," Lapin said. "The home page recruits new students, it markets the campus and it will eventually help us with our comprehensive fund-raising campaign. Most importantly, the site needs to create a sense of community and be a communication hub for the tens of thousands of people who make up UC Davis."

An online survey was conducted last summer, asking Web users about the pluses and minuses of the current site. Nearly everyone affiliated with UC Davis, including many alumni, received an e-mail request to fill out the survey.

Almost 5,900 people answered. Of the total, 54 percent were current UC Davis undergraduates, 22.7 percent were UC Davis staff members, 13.6 percent were graduate students and 5 percent were faculty members.

The most requested improvements included: a calendar of events and deadlines; an improved search feature; a better online campus map, including a version that can be downloaded; better organization of information; and more up-to-date information, especially from departments.

The survey showed that the three top reasons why people visit the UC Davis Web site are to find information about departments and professors, to find information about jobs and to read news about the campus.

The survey also offered many useful, specific improvements that Farris has incorporated into the new site.

For example, the new home page will feature upcoming campus events, and there will be prominent links to a jobs page for students, faculty and staff; the campus map; and MyUCDavis, the Web portal used by many on campus as a personalized home page.

During the planning stage, the strategy committee interviewed key Web users other than those on campus. Prospective students, parents and alumni were interviewed. Their interviews were incorporated into "personas" used to guide the development of the content and information design of the individual Web pages.

The strategy committee also compiled best practices from across the university Web world, looking at design and content at universities such as Cornell, MIT, UCLA and UC Berkeley.

"Berkeley's use of multimedia has been inspirational," said Farris, who headed the strategy committee. "Their pioneering efforts will definitively be influencing our home pages."

For a week in December, Farris studied Web users as they navigated the revised site, watching to see whether it was easy to use and whether people could navigate through it without being confused.

As a result of the survey, the studies and interviews, the site is now organized for audiences -- students, faculty, staff and parents -- as well as a new recognition of important Web users, including future students and the business community. It also is organized by topics, such as academics, research and public service.