I’ve just got my marks back from university for my final assignment in the Web and Intranet Content Management paper I took last trimester. This assignment gave me the opportunity to write a report evaluating our website at the Victoria library.

My report was significantly influenced by Jesse James Garrett’s book The Elements of User Experience. Garrett describes a five plane methodology to guide the development of websites and other interactive online applications. For my assessment of the library website I “reverse-engineered” Garrett’s strategy – using it as a guide to consider the success with which the library website met criteria drawn from four out of the five planes he describes.

So – I began from the bottom of Garrett’s diagram, and worked my way back up:

• Strategy

  Firstly, I examined at the library’s strategic planning documents attempting to determine what functional requirements and content specifications I should be expecting from the website. I considered the users a university library might have, and aimed to describe scenarios that could determine when the library website was doing a successful job.

• Scope

  Next, I considered what the content the website actually held, and what functions it facilitated for users. In particular, I considered the strengths and challenges of the current practice of using Web Content Maintainers to create website content. I also critiqued the site’s heavy use of tables and Dreamweaver templates, arguing that this ties site content to layout in a way that makes site maintenance much more difficult than it needs to be. Based on the marker’s notes, I think at this stage I neglected to adequately assess the functions possible on the site. I think I should have spent some time looking at the effectiveness of web forms and other tools on the site.

• Structure

  I attempted to determine if content was organized in a way that facilitated user navigation through the site and the discovery of relevant content. This part of the assignment was quite important to me because it provided an opportunity to consider the website information architecture. The library website has the potential to have a very clear structure, and the homepage, as it appeared at the time, articulated this structure relatively clearly. However, I feel that as the user navigates deeper into the site – at the secondary and tertiary levels of navigation – long lists of alphabetized content become confusing and frustrating for users who do not already know what they are looking for.

• Skeleton

  Finally, under Garrett’s Skeleton plane, I assessed the website in terms of the design of its navigation. I looked at instances where global, local and supplementary navigational elements were used, and also commented on the visual clarity of the site. This gave me the opportunity to overlay wireframe diagrams over screen captures of the site, and annotate these with commentary about the design of the site.

As a result of my investigations, the report ended with my top three recommendations for further improvements our library website. I feel that in thinking about a site redesign this year, we should be sure that we:

Use consistent & clearly visible site navigation

It is not always clear to users exactly where they are on the website. A more visual navigation metaphor (such as the use of tabs) would significantly enhance users’ ability to navigate through the site. Navigation needs to be consistent throughout the site, particularly in areas of local navigation, where the greatest amount of disorientation can occur. Contextual (in-text) links should give a clear idea of where they are taking users, especially if the link takes them outside of their current navigation structure.

Include user-relevant navigation elements

The website would benefit from navigation elements that are relevant to particular groups of users. The website could identify the user (passively, through login information, or actively, through user selection) and supply navigation to benefit the expected goals of the student concerned. The university’s new website template, currently being used on the Victoria homepage, appears to have user-relevant navigation in the form of a red navigation bar which changes depending what links the user selects. As the user moves around the site, further links are displayed in this location, based on the selection made earlier. It might be possible for the library to make use of this functionality in our redesign.

Manage ease of update & quality of content

The use of Web Content Maintainers is a clear strength of the website, giving it content produced by those who have expertise in the area they are covering. This area does need close management to prevent user error, and to ensure that different content areas complement each other. The library could enhance this work through:

• Training WCMs to be aware of important web publishing issues (such as the need for alt text and page-specific metadata), additionally solidifying this training with a clear set of guidelines for publishing content to the website.
• Implementation of a content management system: Content Maintainers don’t really need to use the advanced power of Dreamweaver when updating library content within rigid templates. Also, library staff must be trained to fill their web content roles so that they do not accidentally create errors. Future iterations of the library website might include a content management system that automatically styles, formats, arranges, and even adds metadata to pages staff create.

If you’d like to read the full thing, you can download the report as a pdf. You can also see the marker’s sheet on flickr. I’d really appreciate any feedback on this, and on improvements to the library website in general.

As I’ve mentioned before – the library is planning to re-design its website some time this year, and there have even been some temporary changes to the front page of the website recently to incorporate a new library blog. I think it will be very interesting to see what sort of changes are made, and hope to have some good ideas to contribute.

One of the main reasons I enrolled in this course was to provide myself with an opportunity to consider in detail the design of our own library website here at Victoria. I wanted an opportunity to prepare for the library’s planned total re-design of our web presence later in 2008. So, for this assignment, I’ve decided to select the Victoria library website as my target, in the hope that it will help stimulate and refine my ideas about the website’s future growth. Perhaps I’ll have the change to engage with the team responsible for the re-design!

From reading the assignment brief, I think the main areas my report will need to address are:

• Site Structure: The information architecture of the site. How is it the content organized?
• Navigation and Design: The interface for the user. How does a user move through the site? Does the design of the pages make the structure of the site visible to the user?
• Writing Style & Metadata: Does the writing match the look and feel of the site? Does it adhere to any standardized format? Is it described correctly
• Accessibility: Does the website meet relevant accessibility standards? Are there particular standards that our library website should comply with?

Additionally, I need to refer to more abstract questions as well:

• What is the overall strategy of the site? Is this reflected in the design of the areas listed above?
• Who are the likely users of the library site? What sorts of features are important to these users, and are these included in the site design?

I’m going to try to blog my progress a little as I work through the assignment, and will be creating a project page to collect these posts and other information about the assignment.