http://www.calderdale.ac.uk/

Calderdale College is the largest provider of further education courses and work-based learning (Apprenticeships) and the sole provider of higher education awards in Calderdale, a Metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire.

Aim of Calderdale Colleges’ digital presence was to showcase its day to day activities and achievements of its students, give information about the courses it offers, automation of admission process by encourage proposed students to apply online using website, attract employees and apply job online, showcase the services offered by each departments includes Higher Education, Further Education, International, 14-16 students, Apprenticeships, Academies includes rugby, football, construction, childcare, hair etc. Inform the interested people in and around Calderdale about day to day activities and students and staff achievements.

Existing web presence were not successful in meeting these goals and were attracting very less users than it intended for.

My Role

I have incorporated Information Architecture and User Experience methodologies in the process and implemented the project in various phases as Research, Strategy, Design, Development, Implementation and Maintenance.

Process

Research

In research phase I have started with reviewing the existing background materials and meeting with strategy team aimed at gaining highlevel understanding of the goals and business context, existing information architecture, content and intended audience. Research phase is again divided into three – Context, Content and Users.

In the context stage, I have done background research includes Stakeholder survey, Gathering materials related to Mission, Vision, Intended audience, goals, content etc. , Introductory presentations with content authors, Marketing managers etc. to create a positive and productive relationship, Strategy team meeting to set the high level goals, mission, vision etc. , Content management meeting to understand the nature of content and process of existing content management process, technology used etc

In the content stage with a view of findability precedes usability I have conducted Heauristic Evaluation against set of design guidelines, Content analysis includes gathering content includes prospectus, brochures, press releases to name a few, analysed the content gathered, content mapping by visually representing the existing information environment and other tasks include benchmarking studies includes before and after and competitive bench marking.

In the user study stage started with the analysing the existing user statistics using Google analytics, Search Log analysis mainly the course search, interact with course enquiry support team to understand about the questions, problems and feedback about the website from students enquiring about courses and tasks include user surveys, user testing of existing website and competitors website, interact with focus groups includes brainstorming sessions, asking opinions about the website and competitors websites and user research sessions includes interviews, Open and closed card sorting, User testing of existing websites.

Strategy

Research forms the foundation for developing the website strategy and provides the high-level framework for the information architecture and helped me to established a direction and scope which guided the project through implementation.

Design

In the design phase I have shaped the high-level strategy and created detailed Blue Prints, Paper prototypes and tested with users, Wireframes to get the final design approved by stake holders, Interactive prototypes to test with users. Tools and technology used includes Illustrator for blueprints, Visio for Wireframes, Photoshop, Html, CSS and JavaScript for interactive prototype.

Development

Actual development starts here includes conversion of all screens into html and technology used are Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for layout design and image manipulation, Xhtml, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ajax, XML &XSLT for the development of screens before handing over to the development team.

Implementation

In implementation phase actively involved in User Testing plans, User testing and evaluation and necessary design changes to meet the user expectations, Style guide design, SEO and launch of the project. User PHP & MySQL for the backend programming and involved in developing various screen layouts.

Administration and Maintenance

In the maintenance phase involved in developing maintenance plan, Measured success, Monitored site usage with Google Analytics and analysed user feedbacks etc.