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myUMich Service Architecture Presented at my.umich Project Brown Bag Meeting, 1 June 2000   Download PowerPoint file Overview Introductions Institutional messages & business goals (Linda Place) User requirements study (Judy Dean) Portal benchmark study John Cady) Service/information architecture (John Cady & B.J Streu) Institutional Messages Suspension of Belief "Publicness" Faculty Autonomy Transparent Administration Making Our History Visible Principle of Suspension of Belief Creation of an environment that Enables and supports intellectual and artistic creativity and exploration of alternative world views Encourages risking identity loss and discourages rigid perspectives Encourages exploration of complexity Fosters compromise and accommodation across divergent viewpoints Principle of "Publicness" Local community minded Commitment to eliminating socio-economic barriers to education Enabling an education that interacts with as many aspects of American life as possible Principle of Faculty Autonomy Decentralization of decision making with respect to teaching and research Enable taking of personal responsibility Encourage personal engagement with work Principle of Transparent Admin Keep bureaucracy invisible to faculty and students Enable creativity and exploration to happen without being obviously present Do not focus on production of goods and services but on enabling of academic processes Principle of Visible History Take community member accomplishments seriously by keeping them visible Business Goals Improved recruitment and retention Brand enhancement (national recognition) Development of lifelong relationships First Target Audience Undergraduate students Potential students User Requirements Overview Role and task modeling Student interactions and user testing "Best practices" research and benchmarking Portal Benchmark Study Goal: see how to best handle portal structure Studied: Top 10 Internet portals (as ranked by Traffick.com) Two school-specific portals with guest views Looked at college student portals; none worth study Focus: organization, navigation, and labeling Positive Findings Found some strong examples to emulate Solid confirmation of the utility of the "containers" approach as the primary model of organization Also, great insights into customization options: Add/remove modules Customize within a module Move content within columns Etc. And into creating the customization process: Strategies for easily moving content up or down in a column How to give user feedback about changes Pitfalls However, we also discovered some pitfalls Some sites supplemented container navigation with lists of menu items, navigation bars, etc. This caused a variety of problems: Pitfall #1: menu sprawl #2: multiple navigation bars #3: several levels of menus #4: partial inclusion of options #5: Duplication or near-duplication of links Benchmark Summary Some good ideas Some lessons A state-of-the-art architecture is within our reach Proposed Organizational Structure In a static Web site: design architecture + content simultaneously In interactive, fluid portal environment: design shell first, then architectures of services Design Considerations Satisfy those fans of one all-in-one page and those who prefer several simpler pages Avoid the menu pitfalls we found in other portals Build a system that can accommodate services we haven't even thought of yet Keep things simple and efficient for the user An Answer Aha! Yahoo! Not a graphically pleasing site, but a very functional one Yahoo! architecture Begin with single all-in-one page Can add pages, choose content, and name them Advantages of Yahoo! Approach Gives user control over the way s/he defines "simple" Relieves us of need to categorize menu items Relieves us of potential menu item politics User presented with only as much complexity as needed Using the Yahoo! Method This model gives us the greatest flexibility and modularity of all the systems we've seen It has been tested and is proving popular Yahoo! is by far the portal leader Our architecture will be more sophisticated and flexible than either MyUW or MyUCLA (and the latter has been in use since 1997) Other Structural Notes Keep navigation to a minimum and prominent Build an intuitive and easy customization process Educate users re: customization benefits/ease Take care in designing default page; most users not expected to customize, at least at first The Architecture Contributing to Student Input Contact Linda Place e-mail: lmp@umich.edu voice: 615-5820

30 August 2000

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