On the heels of the FP&M website launch (opens new window) we just launched the Fiscal Operations (opens new window) department website. The two sites follow the same basic structure. The goal is to be clean and simple and highlight the content on the sites. The primary audience for both of these sites are internal faculty and staff so the design is in line with our base standards.

Information Architecture

The Fiscal Operations redesign has some history behind it. The site started out about a year ago as just a re skin of the current site that was managed through a separate and unmaintained CMS. The navigation and content were all going to stay the same since it was up to date. We redesigned it, implemented it in development and as we were working through testing and approvals we realized our contact had a different vision for the site than the administration. Ultimately the administration didn't approve the site and we decided to go back to the drawing board to revamp the site from the ground up (our preference).

Lessons Learned

We learned a lot from this project and it led to us changing the way we initiate and run our projects. Now as we start any estimate we make sure to meet with the person who has ultimate sign off to get their vision, goals and big picture ideas for the site. It is those goals that we base all of our decisions on. I cannot stress how important it is to hear the goals of the site and ask questions directly to the person signing off. So much can get unintentionally missed between reporting lines.

Internal Site Philosophy

I will post more about our base template later but I wanted to highlight this site as an example of how it works. We have a base template (homepage and child page) that we start all internal site designs from. It handles all combinations of elements we typically see on a department homepage. News, Events, Promotions, Contact, Faculty Highlights, etc. From there we add the imagery related to the department and plug in the navigation. Sometimes the template will get modified to fit the needs of the users or departments but the overall look is the same. We will be doing more of these in the future to bring the internal departments into a consistant and usable interface that is in line with the university standards.

View the new Fiscal Operations website at: http://fisops.wayne.edu/ (opens new window)