Sherman College of Straight Chiropractic Web Site
 

REFLECTIVE STATEMENT
Description: During early 2003, I assumed the duties of college webmaster and was assigned the task of redesigning the Sherman College web site. My initial site redesign used the college’s existing concept look, while completely redesigning the interface and internal hierarchical structure. In 2003, the college embarked on a re-branding campaign that would better communicate its heritage and mission. The goal of the second website redesign was to align the college’s online presence with the redeveloped identity. My second redesign (2004) kept the new structure I’d developed previously, but I redesigned the graphics and color scheme to fit with the material of the new branding campaign. **Please note: The current live site design is not mine. Refer to the screen shots on the right for examples of my work.

Analyze: I included this artifact because it demonstrates my ability to assess, define, develop and implement a highly usable and effective design for a wide constituency of users. Furthermore, it represents my ability to work within the confines of available technology to produce an efficient and user-friendly site. This artifact also demonstrates my skills at developing and implementing interactive features, such asweblogs and podcasts.

Appraise: The original site had too many goals from too many departments, which led to an incredibly cluttered homepage and an information architecture so convoluted that accessing relevant content became a chore. To resolve the problem, I developed a logical hierarchical structure and coded and implemented a dynamically updatable JavaScript navigation site-wide menu. The front page was de-cluttered and the real estate divided among target audiences and top level departments. What was once an interface with a confusing jumble of content became a formal information structure with a combination of clear links, boldly divided content, and a navigation scheme that remains consistent throughout the site. The strength of this artifact is its ability to perform as a recruitment tool for Sherman College as demonstrated by the phenomenal growth in traffic since its introduction. The weakness of this artifact is its inability to perform the same function gracefully and more efficiently. I believe that I was able to vastly improve Sherman’s web presence and functionality within the limited budget of a small college. Outsourcing was estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was able to accomplish the goal of appropriate technology within the confines of budgetary austerity.

Transform: The fact that I accomplished two major design overhauls on one site in the span of a year, working solo, surprised even me. My approach would not make anyone’s best practice list for how to re-design a website, and it is a task I wouldn’t take on again. I agreed to the challenge to fix the poor performance issues of the old site, knowing that a second redesign was in the near future. The challenge of being a one-person web design show and human content management system with severely restricted access to server-side development tools has not proven to be an advantageous mix for me. In my opinion the college web site would be best served by the implementation of a content management system in which each department could update its relevant sections, thus bringing this web site into compliance with twenty-first century programming and maintenance practices.

Update: As of July 2008, I have transitioned to full time instructional designer and Director of Teaching and Engaged Learning and have handed off my webmaster duties. The Sherman web site has since been redesigned by a third-party. During the transition, I was instrumental in securing and helping to implement a content management system, Adobe's Contribute, which allows the various departments at the college to update their sections of the web site without having to knowHTML.