Web Advisory Committee Meeting July 16, 2014
3:00p.m., June 18, 2014. MC 2018 a/b
Present:
Donald Duff-McCracken (Chair), Herbert Balagtas, Marta Bailey, Janice Cooke, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Chris Francis, Joe Kwan (guest), Andrew McAlorum, Collin McIntyre (Secretary), Mark McKay, Megan Saunders, Andrew Smith, Heather Wey, Kris Olafson, Karen Jack, Daniel Allen, Marlon Griffith, Victoria Van Cappellen, Amy Meredith, Susan Shifflett
Regrets:
Darren Bondy, Rose Padacz, Terry Stewart, Kirsty Budd, Jim Johnston
Absent:
Amy Aldous, Dave Annable, Cynthia Breen, Nigel Henriques, Tammy Marcinko, Paul Miskovsky, Elizabeth Rogers,, , Andrea Sweet, Liam Morland, Tanya Balian Bedrossian
1. Responsive/Redesign/
UX Approach (Mark McKay, Joe Kwan, Kris Olafson)
- Mark started the discussion by stating that it is time to bring the design of the UW webspace into '2014'. There are aspects missing in the current design (such as responsiveness and a touch-friendly interface) that are impeding the UW webspace's effectiveness in the "Post PC" world that we have/are entered/entering. If the university is to be viewed as bold and innovative, it needs a bold and innovative webspace!
- Mark mentioned that an informal working group has been established to look at some of the issues regarding moving towards a responsive design. As the Chair mentioned in a previous mailing list message, if members of WAC are interesting in participating they are free to join (and can contact Mark, Kris, or Don for more information). A caveat is that this is a 'capital W' working group and at the stage we are at we are looking for developers and designers to help build out some potential designs, work through some solutions, and to code. There will be plenty of opportunities farther down the road at future WAC meetings to review the designs and give feedback.
- This informal group is also coordinating activities in this area that are already happening. Whilst there is no websites currently within the WCMS that are responsive, there are UW websites out there that are responsive, and others are being planned. This group will not only help coordinate these sites so that there is a UX/UI consistency, but also ensure that the work that is being done can provide an opportunity to raise the bar for the entire campus.
- Joe Kwan then presented some excellent wireframes that he has been developing that are based on understanding what content and navigational structure patterns there are on campus, and how these would need to evolve to work in a responsive layout.
- Joe will continue to refine and evolve these designs and share them with the developers who will be prototyping solutions. Obviously, these designs will be reiteratively brought back to WAC and Web Steering for feedback.
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
There was a lively and enthusiastic discussion period. Here are some of the comments and questions that were raised:
- Andrew McAlorum from the Library stated that they plan on launching a responsive home page (with UX help from Joe) by the end of August. He said that clients of the library -- whom are roaming the stacks looking for books -- find it very difficult using a website that is not responsive and touch-friendly.
- Chris Francis aptly pointed out that if we are moving into a world where out webspace is mobile-friendly, the Graded Browser Support standards (that were presented last week) will need to embrace the importance of the mobile browsers. After a bit of a discussion it was decided to request that Joe and Kevin could further clarify how the grading can work with the movement towards a mobile-friendly environment.
- A discussion ensued regarding whether this responsive redesign was solely for the WCMS and it was pointed out that any work on this should be able to be applied to any UW web presence. Collin McIntyre — a developer working on this — is working in a platform-agnostic environment where the solution could be applied to a Drupal site, Wordpress or static HTML site, and that this is the goal of members of this group.
- Marlon Griffith asked for clarification on the relationship to redesign and responsive. Joe pointed out that while one could merely make the existing site responsive, without a navigational structure that did not adapt to the differing sizes (and screen orientations), there would really be no benefits gained. For responsive to work it must be baked into the design, not merely applied as an afterthought.
2. Chair’s Remarks (Don Duff-McCracken)
None
3. Approval of minutes of May 21, 2014.
The minutes of March May 21, 2014 were approved, by Andrew McAlorum and seconded by Chris Francis with the following changes: Chris Francis had suggested that some of the points under Mark's presentation where from the powerpoint deck and not touched upon in the presentation. It was decided that the if powerpoint deck was linked to the minutes (as per our practice) that listing the content of the deck was not required unless relevant to a key discussion.
4. Business Arising
Marlon Griffith pointed out that "Regrets" had recently disappeared from the attendance options in our minutes. The Chair 'regretted' that this had happened, and ensured that it would be attending from now on ;-)
5. Waterloo CMS Update (Kris Olafson)
- Kris commented on the recent rollback required for WCMS sites after an update caused stability issues. The issue was caused by an unanticipated change when migrating from SVN to git based version control. Site databases were backed up before the rollback occurred – if you need to retrieve information from your site for the period between the update and rollback, please contact Kris.
- The team may be going into 'design-mode' (see the first item in the Minutes), so users may need to be patient in requesting new features.
6. Summer Recess
We will not be meeting in August and resume our meetings on September 17th. Please make use of the mailing list to share information with WAC!
7. Other Business
None