How The New Gig Goes

I have finished day three as the new webmaster for the College of Fine arts. I must say things have been pretty easy going so far, namely because it takes forever to get you into the system at the U of A, and until I am in the system I can’t really do a whole lot.

Monday:

I spent the majority of my time Monday getting the computer set up and meeting with different people in the college. A big part of my job is meeting with the different department heads to discuss what their needs are for their school’s specific site. They are formaly introducing me this Thursday.

Tuesday

Tuesday was spent getting my self set up with a project management system. I am using Things, a very handy little app. I will be writing a more lengthy review later about it, but I really love this application. I may even be able to convince the rest of the department to start using it for project management.

A big part of getting my self set up with a task management system was finding actual task to do, so I spent a decent amount of time going through the College of Fine Art website, as well as each of the individual school sites. I found some quirks here and there as well as some things I am looking to try and rework a bit to try and bring a bit more clarity and consistency. These mainly center around navigation. All of this went into things and each task is organized under either the main site or each of the school sites. Things is incredibly useful.

Impressions So Far:

Though it has only been two days, I am really starting to get a hold of what the job will entail. A huge challenge will be the information architecture of all the information that is contained in the sites.

Everything is pretty much broken up into three tiers. The first tier is the main site for the College of Fine arts. This has all the general information and gives a general overview of everything going on with all the schools. Tier two is comprised of all the different school sites. There is quite a bit of overlap between tier one and tier two, and this is something I am hoping to sort out for the sake of usability. The third tier consists of sites for specific programs as well as sites for different professors in the different schools. I generally won’t have a whole lot involvement with these. I only oversee and give input here and there.

Trying to organize, categories, and structure all this information so that it is easily findable is a project that I am really looking forward to. It probably won’t happen for a while (until the next redesign happens), but it something that I am already thinking a lot about. Information architecture is incredibly interesting to me, and is something that I have never done on this scale before. I will be doing a great deal of research in the coming weeks and months on the subject. I am looking forward to it.

Outside of the the information, another challenge will be finding balance in handling the desires of others and what is most beneficial to the site. Feature creep is inevitable, especially when dealing with a committee. I do have experience in this, though again not at this level. Being the point man for such a large organization’s websites is something I have never taken on before, but I have a great deal of support and I feel I am quite up to the challenge. I am generally pretty good at talking my way in and out of things.