Hello world!
Welcome to my little slice of the web. After having this domain for x years I finally got around to doing something. Well actually, I wanted to put together something that is/was better looking than the sites I work on for my employer. Basically, I don’t really get to control a lot, even though some may think I do. Everyone does as they see fit, rarely consulting me about how it looks. I do a header graphic now and then. Because most areas run so autonomously they want to handle things themselves… and maybe I guess it is because I am part of the IS group even though I am really a graphic/interface designer first, and a programmer second (or maybe third.. whatever). Plus, I wanted to organize my course work from grad school and make it available for general viewing. And then there is the Japan journal, but back to my work place.
I was pretty much responsible for the design of the IS groups intranet site, which you can see here, which basically only involved creating the banners. Below are a links to a couple of sites that I did the design for (they have since been converted to the content management system and need the design revised to work better with it). For now you can see how the sites originally looked here:
Recently, I updated the design for our transition site. The site was originally done by an outside design firm. I converted it to our CMS and then it needed to be revised after we hired the new president. The second version just changed the color themes. Now in its third revision the banner and colors were changed once more. I created the banner from a print brochure. I emulated the paper texture by adding a faint vertical bar pattern., otherwise the print peices were flat in color.
I also did a similar project for a tour promotion site. I used the graphics from the print piece to create the web version. Although, the design for this site was more a collaborative design with the VP of corporate communications acting as art director. She had a vision and I really provided the refinements to make it work.
Both these sites are ephemeral (more so than the other ephemeral sites) so I will try to get an archive once they have been shutdown.
Basically, the web site I work on professionally has three major problems. And in the last year or so every new manager that comes in, is quick to point one or more of these flaws out. First there is no consistency between sites visually. This is a battle that I have long since given up as every area has been given the prerogative to hire an outside designer or to have an internal person who has no (or very little) web design background to do what they want. What has been most interesting as these new managers all redesign their areas and expect everyone to fall in love with their version. The most recent occurrence involved the devotional magazine. The guy paid an outside consultant to design the site (actually he wanted a complete dev with a custom Content Management System). I had enough trouble keeping him on the corporate CMS, let alone care what the design came out to be.
Well, the consultant actually came up with a very clean design. Which is where I felt it needed to be converted to CSS to really do it right, which of course they provided a table based template. Inevitably, there were some things that were not exactly able to replicate in CSS, but I was able to basically do 95+%. The only problem is the design works only for this one area. Several areas have expressed a desire to use a similar design, but none have taken the steps to actually provide the resources to do their sections the same way. And in the mean time I have had yet another area come in and redesign their site in yet another style (not so good this time). I have been overruled by enough VPs, to not waste my time on design issues, until there is a mandate from the executive level. This really bugs me, as our site looks like crap in general and I am the one being blamed for it, though I have been given no real authority and/or resources to improve it.
Secondly, the information architecture is nonexistent. While the devo magazine site layout is clean, it is inflexible and will not work for any area other than where it is being used. And even now, that layout is getting cluttered as three new items had to be added. Every body adds pages willy-nilly, and even though we have a CMS, it doesn’t stop them from cluttering things. They simply must make a new page for everything, with little (if any) thought given to organization or labeling. Here the problem is simply, I do not have enough time to address this issue. The site is really complex, and it needs to be in some regards, as we give away/provide a lot of free content. There are 20,000+ pieces of content on the site and more than 30 groups contributing daily to the system. The IA has to be extensible and robust. My grad school studies have helped me understand that we really need three or four separate information architectures, one for each main group. Yet, here again I have no authority or resources to improve things. This wouldn’t be so bad if it were not for the third thing, which is our search is not that good (when it is working at all).
Search is one of those things that on the surface seem to be simple, but really get complex when you have a lot of content to search through. The key here is, that to have a good search, you need good meta data. This is particularly true when it comes to non-textual content… images, audio, video. Which again, we have none or very poor meta data. The CMS has helped some, but we are only beginning to scratch through that surface simplicity. There is the issue/need of more advanced searching through large content collections. The ability to use boolean operations and extended search clauses greatly improves search… if it can be made to work. While it would be nice to just plug Google into our site and use the Google engine… Which we could do for our educational group, but our other areas would need to pay Google as they are separate from the education groups. And then there is private content that can be accessed only when you are logged in so we would need a Google appliance. For now, we use an open source solution, because that fit our budget ($0), and is actually fairly good. However, due to the lack of meta data, it does not always provide the result we expect. So I have doubts that Google would perform any better, even if we paid.
All this may sound as if I don’t like my job… and that is simply not the case. I enjoy my job very much, I just get frustrated when people look at the site and complain and/or I am embarrassed by somethng I had no control over. Overall, I am optimistic that things will get better and humble enough to accept where I am at fault. It is great working with most of the people, even the ones who complain. The biggest thing is, I hope to be a part of the process that does improve the site whatever role I may play (even if it means stepping aside). In the end the site is a mission (pun intended) critical part of the operation, and something this large and complex needs the contributions of many to be made an effective, efficient and satisfying resource.
While most of my time is still spent on the programmatic side of things so I haven’t really been able to devote much effort to the design/interface side. One way that I am trying to improve things is our CMS system has been based on HTML table layout, but I am in the process of converting it to a CSS based layout. I converted one site already (mentioned above), but I wasn’t able to apply it to other sites yet as the template has too much of a variation. I am working on a master template that would be usable for all sites. I am also reworking the menu system on the left side. This uses a massive javascript that I researched several years ago. We paid the commercial use fee and have gotten updates, but there are still problems… so I plan to rework the menu system to be mostly CSS lists and a small javascript to manage image changes. Here are links to a couple of really good resources on CSS lists used for navigation;