1. Campus Community Technologies
YaleSites Next Steps
Lec Maj & Lisa Sawin
User Experience and Web Technology
Tuesday, March 11th, 2014

2. Portfolio Enterprise Content Management Website
Planning, Building, & Support
Metrics
&
Analytics
Platform Development and Maintenance
Enterprise Content Management
Mobile Applications
Calendaring,
Events, and Logistics Management
Search
Digital Asset, Document, and Image Management
Ecommerce

3. Approach High Quality at Low Cost Lightweight Simple self-service
Consolidated
Template based
Cloud Enabled
Simple self-service
Verified Professional Services
Supported
Help Desk
Client Teams
Application Teams
Vendors
Scalable

4. Vanilla Web Services
Our mission is simple: Make it as easy as possible to have a nice website at Yale.

5. A nice website is…
Understandable
Accessible
Updatable
Maintainable

6. 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

7. Design Flavors

8. Drupal – a solid base
We start with the YaleSites Drupal platform – a mature technology for building websites.

9. YaleSites: OPAC -> ITS
Minimize disruptions to service
Help team re-adjust to ITS culture
Update processes to ITS model

10. 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 high-performing group for the work ahead.

11. Thinking about what our users need
Expanding on what we know
Meeting tons of people
Surveying users
Peer review

12. 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

13. Enterprise Search & Analytics
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

14. How will we build an excellent web for Yale?
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

15. Web Project Life Cycle

16. Basic services
Web analysis report
Hosting
Training
Support*
Consultative packages*
* needs clarification / refinement

17. 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

18. 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?

19. Site planning / building: scheduling options
First come, first serve
Governance committee sets priority order
Need flexibility for urgency to override decisions when necessary

20. 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?

21. Video Tutorials

22. Improve the Platform
Reusable templates (lab sites)
Import multiple CAS users
Inline image cropping
Org chart
3rd party authentication
Training/quiz feature

23. 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

24. Events & Logistics Reusable Data for Web/Applications
Aggregate for Search
Simplify the environment
Win-Win $ model
Aiming for 100% YALE Adaption

25. Our Dream
Make user experience expertise a consumable service available to all ITS projects:
big or small
internal or external
agile or waterfall

26. Our nut to crack
We will figure out a service-oriented way to use existing CMS technology to meet user needs within the higher-ed environment.

27. Thank you!
We’d love to hear your comments and questions.