Getting Called Out

• Rajeev
• May 09, 2008
• blog
• 2 comments

Even though LSA: Development, Marketing & Communications (LSA:DMC) finds itself in a college environment, we take a rather closeted approach to our work. This is not unique to our department, but our difference from others, our audience, makes this modus operandi a dubious proposition. For example, where LSA: Information Technology depends on a level of privacy to enhance and preserve security, our work, always open to the school in general and the world at large, is one largely bereft of such a nomenclature. Our design process conducts extensive testing, particularly on large sites like our massive LSA undertaking. Yet, through implementation we cling to privacy as necessity, a way to obscure our work from the world at large.

There is good reason behind this of course. Our Content Management System (CMS), Vignette, has been the recipient of considerable bad press throughout the University. I will be the first to admit its many faults, but consequently a large number of our complaints arise from those users who don't want to work within the system and use the former as excuses. Still, with such bad press, intermittent performance and a highly shoddy outsourcer, it is no wonder that we hold our cards close. After all, worse public relations (PR) is hardly the thing we need right now and revealing too much has the definite liability of providing this. Yet, I must argue that bad press is always a persistent factor in our work. This is primarily true from those who do not like our system or have a bone to pick with us. However, there are others out there who complain of a lack of transparency and not only in our implementation of sites but our maintenance of the servers. These people could be easily satiated and bad press can not only be mitigated, but converted to good relations across departments and with our primary users: students.

It is with this in mind that I walked into our "Web Meeting" on Wednesday, May 7th, and asked my bosses, both Sean and Evan, if they would consider opening up the LSA site for people to not only come visit, but also critique. This would be a rather huge step for us, as much of our work is done in a rather closeted fashion. Staff and faculty get a say in the direction of the site. However, their inability to discern issues regarding accessibility and code leaves us with no audience to test our sites against these variables. In a sense, we have no one to hold our feet to the fire. Once the site is launched, we rarely go back and make large changes to a site and essentially any word that comes back on these two sticking points is largely lost. For smaller sites this is more or less acceptable. However, with a large undertaking, like the entire LSA site, with so much traffic and so many views, our insular approach (that may have served us well) is no longer feasible. Moreover, I feel that it is no longer acceptable. Critique will not only help us do better work, but most importantly it will help us create a better product for our primary consumers: students. We serve the students, but are so far from interacting with them, that our primary focus is the staff and the, sometimes petulant, faculty.

My idea met with resistance. People were okay with the idea on a general basis and saw it as good. However, when it came to applying this principle to our work there was a lot of resistance. There was no blanket no, but people were gun shy. In the case of Evan and Sean this is for very good reason. Sean, for around the past two years, has been on the receiving end of an ever-long grievance list over Vignette that he cannot control. Phrases like "expectation control" are bandied about, but no amount of PR can change the fact that a product is essentially bad. That is Vignette to a "T". So, for him and Evan opening themselves up to even more critique is far from a good idea. Moreover, having been here longer, they have lost my naiveté and may have been bitten before by such good-natured acts. However, for me it was a situation where any loss of PR was calculated and the gains were considerably greater. Those who have an agenda against LSA:DMC or aim only to critique the new site and design will do so now or a month from now when the new site is launched. Nothing is going to stop this group from bad-mouthing our work. On the other hand, their critique can be smothered in a limited "soft" release by stating unequivocally that these people are complaining about a site in development, a beta site that is. On the other hand, those who aim to help and give us genuine feedback will appreciate that we reached out to them. They will give us hours of QA that our small group would never have the opportunity to conduct. In a way those extra comments of praise for openness would work in our favor, those of us who slave away on designing sites with little voice from those we design the sites for.

We did do extensive testing for the new LSA design around one year ago. However, this testing, which included student focus groups, was relevant only to design. Design and implementation are two completely different beasts. Showing students a bunch of images on a PowerPoint slide is no substitute for them interacting with the site. The latter is a situation where they can poke, prod and even break. All of this turns out to be for our benefit. It may be more work in the short-term, but it helps us deliver a much better product in the long-term. I think one of the misconceptions was about how much we would change based on feedback. I think at some level, for me as a designer, feedback about the site itself and its code is absolutely important for me. However, things set in stone, like site look and feel and site structure, will never change and I don't think it should. That requires a level of bureaucracy and management that is way outside the scope of receiving feedback. Yet, I feel there is an avenue for getting changes that I have outlined here and those opinions I have yet to fathom. All of this can only help us, now, at a time when the site is considerably more pliable than when we go live. A concern for security also came forth. In a large part, there was concern that passing around a development URL, even for a published site, might open us up to attacks from those with a malicious mind. However, to that I only have to say, if we are going to get attacked, wouldn't it be better to have that happen before we launch than after. Nothing would be worse for PR than to have our live site hacked on the day of our launch, when this highly anticipated redesign will be unveiled. Moreover, I feel that a point on security is rather irrelevant since security through obscurity has been proven as an ineffective deterrent. Searching for "lsa vignette" brings up the backend on Google's first page, the fourth result. There is very little obscurity in our increasingly transparent Internet world and relying on this for our security is rather poor.

A few paragraphs back I used the term "soft launch". This is a term bandied about by casinos, when they open early to work the kinks out of their system and to ascertain feedback. If institutions as rigid as casinos can manage to incorporate the feedback process into their work, then we as an institution of higher education and we as a technology department should be able to work better with our users to not only engage them, but also respond to them. Moreover, there are important issues here more abstract than the user and outside the user. There is hardly a stand for web design and standards at the University and that is a position LSA:DMC is uniquely situated to take. It can help us distinguish our sites from not only other institutions, but also other colleges within the University. This all worked out well though, as we came to a compromise that was more amiable for all. It was decided that the XHMLT+CSS mockups that I created in January would be released for wider critique. This would dull any criticism of the CMS and stop any security issues as the pages would essentially static HTML. With a few weeks to release, when the site is 90%+ complete, we will do a beta with the published site. I am unsure if the latter will actually take place, but I hope it does. Looks like this may just be the short, but hopefully indelible, mark I leave upon this place.