Download
1 / 47
470 likes | 569 Vues
Explore the principles and goals of myUMich service architecture focused on transparency, faculty autonomy, publicness, and visible history. Discover user requirements, benchmark studies, positive findings, pitfalls, and proposed organizational structure to achieve a state-of-the-art architecture.
E N D
myUMich Service Architecture Janus Project Brown Bag 1 June 2000
Overview • Introductions • Institutional messages & business goals • Linda Place • User requirements study • Judy Dean • Portal benchmark study • John Cady • Service/information architecture • John Cady & BJ Streu myUMich Service Architecture
Institutional Messages • Suspension of Belief • “Publicness” • Faculty Autonomy • Transparent Administration • Making Our History Visible myUMich Service Architecture
Principle of Suspension of Belief • Creation of an environment that • Enables and supports intellectual and artistic creativity and exploration of alternative world views • Encourages risking identity loss and discourages rigid perspectives • Encourages exploration of complexity • Fosters compromise and accommodation across divergent viewpoints myUMich Service Architecture
Principle of “Publicness” • Local community minded • Commitment to eliminating socio-economic barriers to education • Enabling an education that interacts with as many aspects of American life as possible myUMich Service Architecture
Principle of Faculty Autonomy • Decentralization of decision making with respect to teaching and research • Enable taking of personal responsibility • Encourage personal engagement with work myUMich Service Architecture
Principle of Transparent Admin • Keep bureaucracy invisible to faculty and students • Enable creativity and exploration to happen without being obviously present • Do not focus on production of goods and services but on enabling of academic processes myUMich Service Architecture
Principle of Visible History • Take community member accomplishments seriously by keeping them visible myUMich Service Architecture
Business Goals • Improved recruitment and retention • Brand enhancement (national recognition) • Development of lifelong relationships myUMich Service Architecture
First Target Audience • Undergraduate students • Potential students myUMich Service Architecture
User Requirements Overview • Role and task modeling • Student interactions and user testing • “Best practices” research and benchmarking myUMich Service Architecture
Portal Benchmark Study • Goal: see how to best handle portal structure • Studied: • Top 10 Internet portals (as ranked by Traffick.com) • Two school-specific portals with guest views • Looked at college student portals; none worth study • Focus: organization, navigation, and labeling myUMich Service Architecture
Positive Findings • Found some strong examples to emulate • Solid confirmation of the utility of the “containers” approach as the primary model of organization myUMich Service Architecture
Also, great insights into customization options: Add/remove modules Customize within a module Move content within columns Etc. And into creating the customization process: Strategies for easily moving content up or down in a column How to give user feedback about changes Positive Findings, part 2 myUMich Service Architecture
Pitfalls • However, we also discovered some pitfalls • Some sites supplemented container navigation with lists of menu items, navigation bars, etc. • This caused a variety of problems: • Pitfall #1: menu sprawl myUMich Service Architecture
Pitfalls • #2: multiple navigation bars myUMich Service Architecture
Pitfalls (continued) • #3: several levels of menus myUMich Service Architecture
Pitfalls • #4: partial inclusion of options myUMich Service Architecture
Pitfalls • #5: Duplication or near-duplication of links myUMich Service Architecture
Benchmark Summary • Some good ideas • Some lessons • A state-of-the-art architecture is within our reach myUMich Service Architecture
Proposed Organizational Structure • In a static Web site: design architecture + content simultaneously • In interactive, fluid portal environment: design shell first, then architectures of services myUMich Service Architecture
Satisfy those fans of one all-in-one page and those who prefer several simpler pages Avoid the menu pitfalls we found in other portals Build a system that can accommodate services we haven't even thought of yet Keep things simple and efficient for the user Design Considerations How to: myUMich Service Architecture
An Answer • Aha! Yahoo! • Not a graphically pleasing site, but a very functional one • Yahoo! architecture • Begin with single all-in-one page • Can add pages, choose content, and name them myUMich Service Architecture
Advantages of Yahoo! Approach • Gives user control over the way s/he defines “simple” • Relieves us of need to categorize menu items • Relieves us of potential menu item politics • User presented with only as much complexity as needed myUMich Service Architecture
Using the Yahoo! Method • This model gives us the greatest flexibility and modularity of all the systems we’ve seen • It has been tested and is proving popular • Yahoo! is by far the portal leader(see handouts) • Our architecture will be more sophisticated and flexible than either MyUW or MyUCLA (and the latter has been in use since 1997) myUMich Service Architecture
Other Structural Notes • Keep navigation to a minimum and prominent • Build an intuitive and easy customization process • Educate users re: customization benefits/ease • Take care in designing default page; most users not expected to customize, at least at first myUMich Service Architecture
Contributing to Student Input Contact Linda Place lmp@umich.edu 615-5820
