Updates and case studies from our team in Communications
Phase two of the IT web rebuild project was a complex and rewarding piece of the puzzle. Working closely with stakeholders, we delivered a new Tools, software and services section – spanning over 160 web pages which went live at the end of September.
Continue reading Easy access to IT tools, software and services
As part of the ongoing project to rebuild academic department web pages, we’ve been working to enhance departmental content about equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).
Through collaborating with several departments over the past couple of years, as well as the Equality and Diversity Office, we’ve made significant strides in improving how departmental EDI content is presented.
It’s not always been easy to find a solution that meets everyone’s needs, but through persistence and collaboration we believe we’ve found a neat approach which solves a few pieces of the EDI puzzle.
Continue reading Transforming departmental EDI web pagesWe’ve recently launched a set of web pages to help staff lead projects at York. This was a collaborative effort working with the University’s central Project Management Office.
The new Project management resources web pages provide guidance on the standard project life cycle at York, from concept through to handover and close. The pages are published in the main staff section of the University website to maximise visibility and discoverability of the information.
Continue reading New project management web pages
I recently wrapped up a great project rebuilding our web pages about campus. This job was a joy to do because it allowed me to focus on many different forms of content – video and imagery proved just as important as copy to show (rather than tell) what our campus has to offer.
The campus section is a high-traffic section, with the campus landing page racking up over 11,000 annual page views. However, most pages were using our older Classic templates and the content and imagery was out of date. Some content was also duplicated elsewhere on the website and many of the pages hadn’t been updated in recent years.
A much needed refresh was in order to better ‘sell’ York’s beautiful green campus.
Continue reading Campus web pages refreshIn this major revamp, we’re making IT Services’ web pages easier to use. As well as being some of our most popular sets of internal pages, they’re also super complex. We’ve gone back to the drawing board to investigate what users really want.
This is my first time posting on this blog so I’ll start by introducing myself. I’m Harriet 👋. I’m part of the Content Design Team in Communications. As a web content developer, it’s my job to design and transform online content. I started at the University last year specifically to work on rebuilding the IT Services web pages. I’m leading this highly collaborative project, working alongside the IT Services team and others to plan and deliver an improved experience.
Continue reading Fresh new look for IT Services’ web pagesIn October, we launched a new set of web pages which bring together resources on change management for University teams. The project proved once again why content is key!
Here are the Making change happen web pages which we worked on with the People and Organisational Development (POD) team within HR.
Like all universities (and humans in general) we face changes big and small on a regular basis. These web pages and the resources they link to were compiled to help enable successful change at York.
This blog post is a quick case study of how the project went and why it went well.
First we had a solid brief to work from. In particular, we had a clear articulation of the business needs of the project from the POD team:
From those business needs, we created a user story to articulate in human terms the challenge to be solved:
“As a manager or leader at the University, I need resources to help me implement a change within my team. I need to learn about change management at my own pace. I need to know about the fundamentals of change management and/or and top up on areas I’m less familiar with.”
From those business needs and to meet the requirements of the user story, we and POD determined the outputs would be:
A key goal for the self-serve resources was being able to approach the same set of resources from different perspectives.
The original idea was to use fancy widgets and tagging functionality. The downside of this was that doing so would involve using another web platform (outside of our Web CMS).
This would mean it wouldn’t be part of our core website experience and would be harder to find and maintain over the long term. So we agreed sticking with the main Web CMS would be best.
Our Digital team didn’t have capacity to build any bespoke templates but we knew we could still create a good user experience with what we’ve already got, because…
This project was all about putting content at the heart of it, by really thinking through structures and content format.
The resources would need to appear across two main categories initially:
We looked at different ways we could use existing CMS content types and functionality. We decided building a hierarchy around the change categories and ‘mirroring’ the content would work well.
Next we developed content models. This is a structured way of presenting content.
We got really familiar with the change management resources, so we could work out how we could present them in a neat, consistent and user friendly format.
We developed models for the three types of pages we would need. Our colleagues in POD used these models to compile and create the information we needed to form the web content.
The purpose of these pages is to provide the resources in a concise and easy to understand way.
Each page has a brief introduction and key factors to set the scene. Each resource is a separate piece of content in the CMS which can then be mirrored as necessary to other category pages.
These pages introduce the main categories. We’ve used panels to link to the subcategories pages where the resources are housed.
The landing page explains what the resources are for and how to use them.
Getting all our ducks in a row with the content planning meant the build was easy and fun!
I worked with my brilliant and super helpful colleague, Reena, to build and edit the content in the CMS. We did this all in one day. It was so good to be able to focus on one project all day. And we got it all done!
After that we had one round of stakeholder feedback and then a final sign off meeting. Content changes during review and sign off were minimal, thanks in large part to the content modelling stage earlier in the process.
Our stakeholders were really pleased with the process we’d supported them through and the end result.
For the next phase, we’ll be working with the Strategic Planning and Performance team and IT Services to migrate more resources into the new framework we’ve developed.
We’ll also be adding short quotes and testimonials from leaders and managers who have used the resources for a change in their team. We’re looking forward to seeing these and hearing about how useful the resources are in practice.
Having recently joined Communications as Web Content Developer, I was keen to get stuck into the CMS. Luckily, one of my first tasks was to rebuild the History of the University branch on the website. For this quick turnaround project, my colleague Harriet and I had a focus day where we got the bulk of the work done. It was a super fun project and proved to be a real eye opener and a handy learning tool to get to grips with the CMS and the Digital Pattern Library (DPL) content types.
The pages were receiving an increase in traffic due to the University’s 60th anniversary. The content was in legacy Classic templates and we didn’t have a page for the 2010s. It was a timely moment for an update.
On our focus day we migrated the existing content into DPL templates. We made minimal changes to the content itself, but moving the pages over to DPL allowed us to rethink the layout. We decided to add prominence to the fantastic range of historic images that came from the York Digital Library, which give a real sense of each of the University’s six decades of history. The focus day proved really productive and gave Harriet and I the opportunity to bounce ideas off each other and work through problems together.
Once we’d migrated the old pages over, I turned my attention to creating a new page for the 2010s, sourcing content for the news archive and researching wider national trends and events in higher education for the decade. A shout out to Alex Holland, Paul Shields and Charles Fonge for helping me hunt down images for the 2010s page gallery. I’m delighted with the range of assets we uncovered.
After working through some finishing touches to make the content flow in the new layouts, there was just one thing missing. We needed a hero image on the landing page to illustrate the University’s vibrant history. We went to the design team with a request to pull a range of historic images into a cohesive montage graphic. Safe to say they delivered. Thank you Sean Gee for your help and expertise with this work.
I’m thrilled with how the new pages have turned out and the project has helped me quickly get to grips with the CMS in a ‘learning by doing’ way (which is my favourite way to learn). Looking ahead, future updates to the branch have been scheduled into our new web editorial calendar in Asana and a governance plan has been put in place.
Dive into the past and explore the history of the University.
We’re about to complete the pilot phase of our big project to work with all academic departments to update their web pages to new templates and optimised content. Here’s an update on what we’ve done so far and what’s coming next.
Continue reading Rolling out department web rebuilds
We’ve created a selection of branded templates for digital screen content which are now ready to use in the brand platform.
Continue reading Now available: digital screen templates
As we roll out our Digital Pattern Library (DPL) templates to more and more department websites, we’ve also needed to update our CMS training so that everyone using these templates is up to date with best practice. We took this opportunity to redevelop how the training is presented, and consider how we can make our training materials even more effective.
Continue reading Grand (digital) Designs: Building our new Digital Pattern Library CMS training
