Website Redesign

Brown University, BioMed Faculty Administration

A month into my new position as Faculty Actions Specialist at Brown University’s BioMed Faculty Administration I set to work on a website transition project that was handed down to me by my predecessor. This project was remarkably similar to my successful completion of the Colorado State University website transition and remodel project in nearly every way. The charge included transitioning pages, data, and documents from one platform (WordPress) to another (Drupal). This transfer required a review of each page for content accuracy and clear communication, photo and image selection for banners, a complete overhaul of menu structuring and webpage mapping, building new content, and learning an entirely new platform! This time, however, I was only a team of one with occasional check-in meetings with the Web Content Manager in the BioMed Communications department. Fortunately, my predecessor did much of the heavy lifting on the front end of the project over the two years prior to my taking over her seat. However, after so much time had passed and in the transition of ownership, the vision and needs for the website changed as well. This meant essentially starting from scratch with the benefit of having the base website already transitioned to the new platform.

Our goals moving forward were accessibility, communication, inclusivity, and a deep dive into updated University communication standards. The element of inclusivity centralized on building up resources and accessibility for our Faculty clients in general as well as bolstering our resources and presence dedicated to the often low-touch, but just as valuable Biology Departments. Previously, our website was Clinical-focused which alienated half of our client population! The development of this section of the website is ongoing and will continue to grow as resources and needs are identified. In the meantime, we now have a dedicated space for these clients to utilize and know with certainty that they are where they belong.

Another challenge to this project was my absolute unfamiliarity with the information I was reviewing and creating. I had just started this new-to-me position in a new-to-me office at a new-to-me employer when I initiated my leg of the project. I had a truly doubtful advantage. On one hand, I was a fresh set of eyes. This allowed me to focus on navigability for website mapping and menu building. I was able to genuinely ask myself, “Where would I expect to find this information if I had never been to this website before?” I could take on the perspective of our clients. On the other hand, I had no idea if the information I was working with was accurate and up to date. There was also the challenge of making sure that I was communicating processes and policies accurately and in alignment with reality for how our office and team performed our duties. This type of knowledge and expertise naturally comes with experience I simply did not have at the start, but that I quickly gained, in large part because of this project. As a result of the successful launch of the new website, I am not only an expert in where information is located on our new site, but a budding expert in our policies and procedures as well.

During the remodeling process and throughout my day-to-day duties, I realized that our forms were disjointed in their presentation, inconsistent in their accessibility, and often either without enough space provided to answer a long-form question or simply did not ask for enough information for our purposes. This audit led to a complete overhaul of our forms to build a suite based on a consistent template and dated for tracking purposes. This suite was created in both Word documents and Fillable PDFs depending on the form’s purpose and designed for readability with clean edges, aligned fillable and checkable boxes, and increased space for information collection. Where necessary, I reformatted the form to collect more information related to the task the form supported to assist with process efficiencies in our office.

The schedule of this website was far more relaxed than my earlier website project at Colorado State University. There was no major deadline in this case, however, our team was certainly motivated to launch as soon as possible as we had been maintaining both the old and new versions of the site simultaneously for over two years. During the year-long project, I worked in conjunction with the BioMed Communications office, collaborated with our 20 department administrators, and our team while performing my regular duties as a Faculty Actions Specialist and providing coverage for our Director and Manager of Academic Affairs during the Spring season while they were either out on leave or had departed the University, respectively.

The new website launched October 2023 and has already received high praise from our clients at every level. To further serve our clients, I created and disseminated at launch, a Google Form for website-related feedback that has provided our team with valuable information for resources sought, links needed, and general thoughts from their perspective. I look forward to working with our clients as we continue to develop this resource.

Colorado State University, International Students and Scholars

As co-leader of the Communications Committee at Colorado State University (CSU), I was responsible for leading the website migration and redesign for our unit in the Office of International Programs under the supervision of our Associate Director. Our server and website platform were set to expire and we had two months to make the switch. A formidable deadline when we had to consider the migration, review, and consolidation of over 250 existing pages on the old website and the complete creation of the new one. All while everyday workloads persisted. Remarkably, we were able to complete the project a week before our deadline with nearly 100 redundant pages removed in the consolidation effort.

Much of the migration was delegated to support staff throughout the office allowing for many hands to make light work of the task. After the migration, I assigned sections of the website to the main staff members for review. While they worked on their projects, others focused on designing and updating each page for a more dynamic user experience.

One of our goals for the new website was to better communicate our story to our potential and current students, the larger CSU community, and those who live within and without Fort Collins. We needed to find a way to show who we are, what we do, and what our international students and scholars do for us through collaboration and cultural exchange. This part of the website development is ongoing and includes highlighting student and scholar successes and contributions to their fields of study as well as increased social media interactions.

Throughout the development process, our team had to respect and maintain the pre-set community guidelines for not only our office’s website design but also those determined by the main marketing and branding office of CSU. This often included needing to change tactics for image choices and content presentation.

For my leadership and involvement, I was presented with an award “in recognition and appreciation for outstanding contribution to the ISSS website revision project.”

Please take a moment to review the videos below to see a comparison of the old website to the new and how the information was migrated from accordion headers to individual pages, updated for a more modern look, and the overall dynamic and interactive user experience.

The new website was launched in January 2020 and I maintained, updated, added content, and streamlined it to best SEO practices until my departure February 2022.