Lorraine Spencer, IT Manager at Johns Hopkins University in the Office of Continuing Medical Education presented today a session titled “A Web Re-Design: Lessons Learned.â€
This is Amy Stevens’ second and last scheduled post.
What happens when you simultaneously launch a redesign of both your front end and back end of your institutions’s website?
Ms.Lorraine Spencer walked participants through planning, implementing and then Monday morning quarterbacking for the redesign of Johns Hopkins University’s Office of Continuing Medical Education’s redesign.
Ms. Spencer outlined the standard project management steps that define any project of this scope, with the reminders to get buy-in in advance, to set project goals before finding a development partner, and making sure that your development specs are as detailed as possible because it is easier to drop something in development (while making the project cheaper and faster) than to add something in after the project is underway.
One element she mentioned that was particularly important was that she had the major stakeholders and the individuals responsible for signing off on the project in on every meeting from the get go – the result: a remarkable turnaround in design time. It took just three short weeks to come up with and agree upon the site look & feel.
The project did have a few problems that provided valuable lessons for Ms.Spencer’s audience.
As technology oriented people, we may tend to believe that technology can solve workflow problems – but beware of implementing a broken process online. If your admissions workflow isn’t working off line, it isn’t likely to work online. Fix the workflow first, then find a way to put it online. Also, remain vigilant to internal communications break-down – be aware of anything that is changing even in different departments that could then impact the project. Finally don’t let the graphical design get in the way of the site functionality.
Ms. Spencer closed with advice from her development partners, who advised, “don’t be afraid to scrap everything early in the process and start over, get the wireframes right, even if you have to spend more time than you want on this part of the process and finally, don’t be afraid of changes, You may have to change the spec, or your timeline or both, be agile.”