Campus Community Technologies
YaleSites Next Steps
Lec Maj & Lisa Sawin
User Experience and Web Technology
Tuesday, March 11th, 2014
Portfolio
Metrics
&
Analytics
Mobile
Applications
Website
Planning,
Building, &
Support
Enterprise
Content
Management
Platform
Development
and
Maintenance
Calendaring,
Events, and
Logistics
Management
Digital Asset,
Document,
and Image
Management
Search
Ecommerce
Approach
• High Quality at Low Cost
• Lightweight
– Consolidated
– Template based
– Cloud Enabled
• Simple self-service
• Verified Professional Services
• Supported
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Help Desk
Client Teams
Application Teams
Vendors
• Scalable
Vanilla Web Services
Our mission is simple: Make it
as easy as possible to have a
nice website at Yale.
A nice website is…
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Understandable
Accessible
Updatable
Maintainable
Portfolio – Metrics and Trends
4,000 Yale Websites:
• ~ 50% Static
• 38% Contain Google Analytics
• 5% Mobile Friendly
• 40% Under Real-time
Performance Management
Preliminary ADA / Accessibility Metrics:
• APIs
• Accessibility vs. Compliance
• Changes to Platform Across all
Websites
Design Flavors
Drupal – a solid base
We start with the YaleSites
Drupal platform – a mature
technology for building
websites.
YaleSites: OPAC -> ITS
• Minimize disruptions to service
• Help team re-adjust to ITS culture
• Update processes to ITS model
We’re hiring!
• A producer, UX designer and IA will round out the
team, giving us the skills we need to plan websites
and improve our platform.
• A focus on nurturing teamwork will ensure a highperforming group for the work ahead.
Thinking about what our users need
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Expanding on what we know
Meeting tons of people
Surveying users
Peer review
What we know…and don’t know
Many people want to build very similar sites
Expert advice would be very welcome as a
consumable service
Lots of people need a little bit of help
Some people would like a
lot of help
How to set limits on the
services we provide
Which services we should charge
for and how much
Enterprise Search & Analytics
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User can’t search across all websites on campus
4,000 websites = 17,000,000 web pages
Facets
Common Language
Reusable Vocabularies
Content Strategy Pilot
Social Analytics
How will we build an excellent web for Yale?
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A service model which supports our goal and mission
A set of offerings which address client pain points
A sustainable funding model
Clients can tell what are offerings are
A clear rubric for who pays for our services
A clear rubric for how we prioritize the scheduling of
projects
• An operational model which supports accurate
schedules
• An operational model which supports a happy team
Web Project Life Cycle
Basic services
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Web analysis report
Hosting
Training
Support*
Consultative packages*
* needs clarification / refinement
Consultative packages
• Unleash our expertise to improve a wide
swath of Yale’s web
• Topics include accessibility review, grant
proposal web architecture, vendor selection,
content strategy, graphic design, information
architecture, user experience.
• Well-defined process and deliverables to allow
for meeting client expectations while
constraining staff effort
Project planning / building: pricing options
• Use complexity to determine price?
– Small / Medium / Large
– Rough grouping is easy but not accurate
• Use “who you are” to determine price?
– Yale’s formal organizational structure
– Is the unit self-supporting?
Site planning / building: scheduling options
• First come, first serve
• Governance committee sets priority order
• Need flexibility for urgency to override
decisions when necessary
Support options
• Train Help Desk to provide excellent first line
support
• Support vendors as development partners
• Basic vs ”high touch” tracks?
• Only support YaleSites themes, not custom?
• Only support a constrained list of modules?
Video Tutorials
Improve the Platform
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Reusable templates (lab sites)
Import multiple CAS users
Inline image cropping
Org chart
3rd party authentication
Training/quiz feature
Benefits
Consultation
Legacy Web Structure and Analytics
Website Planning
Information Architecture
Template Design
Project Timeline and Expectations
Yale Modules and Plugins
Yale Template Development
YaleSites configuration
Custom URL (something.yale.edu)*
Rock Solid Development
Training and Tutorials
Migration to Drupal 8, 9, etc. platform
24/7 Emergency Server Support
8am-7pm EST Help Desk
Continual Service Improvement
Events & Logistics
• Reusable Data for Web/Applications
• Aggregate for Search
• Simplify the environment
• Win-Win $ model
• Aiming for 100% YALE Adaption
Our Dream
Make user experience
expertise a consumable
service available to all ITS
projects:
• big or small
• internal or external
• agile or waterfall
Our nut to crack
We will figure out a serviceoriented way to use existing
CMS technology to meet
user needs within the
higher-ed environment.
Thank you!
We’d love to hear your
comments and questions.