Task Force Agenda

10 a.m., October 14, 2002. ITS Large Conference Room

Business

New web site development

1. Feedback on MSU site redesign
   Using the Quick Poll feature, we've asked users a couple of questions.
   1. The first was simple: Do you like or not like the new site, or aren't you sure? The results are below:
      1. Duration of survey: 7/25-9/3/2002 (note: this includes a hundred or so pre-deployment votes)
      2. Number of responses: 1488
         • I like it: 990
         • I don't like it: 305
         • I'm not sure: 193
   2. The next survey was about Quick Links on the home page. The summary of those results is below:
      1. Duration of survey: 9/3-10/2002
      2. 98 total responses
         [ the most requested new links were: departments (5), directory (4), and library (3)]
         • Alumni: 3; all of them say they use Quick Links; two say Give to MSU is most useful
         • Staff: 7 say they use, 2 say they don't use; Check E-Mail (5) and The Hub (4) are most useful
         • Other: 2 who use
         • Faculty: 4 who use; Events (2) is the most useful to this group
         • Prospective Students: 2 who use
         • Current Students: 68 said they use, 10 say they don't use; Register (61), Check E-mail (46), Ucompass (38), Events (38), MSU Jobs (32), and the Hub (28) were the top most useful links. Especially notable was that Security was clearly least useful for Current Students (42)
2. Bugs
   We discovered that the web site's design and navigation features created problems on some computer/browser combinations. (test results from different browsers: 53Kb Word doc available on-campus only)
   1. Poor performance on Macintosh browsers, especially Internet Explorer resulting in long loading time.
   2. Poor performance on Netscape and Mozilla browers resulting in choppy scrolling.
   3. No menu functionality on Opera browser.
3. Discussion/Action Items: Fixes/Enhancements
   1. Toggle Menu
      In order to better serve Mac users, we recommend making the supersite menu standard hyperlinks rather than a drop-down javascript menu. Users on all platforms would have the opportunity to enable or disable the javascript menu, but for Macs, the default version of the site would show the hyperlink menu. If the user chooses to change the default, a cookie would be required to permit this functionality. By clicking the "Enable Menu" link at the top of the page, the javascript menu will load every time the site is accessed by this computer/browser.
   2. Supersite2
      We're working on the next version of MSU's site. One of the issues that the usability testing showed was the very small size of the MSU logo. Other issues involve the difficulty with the code used in the current site. We're in the process of working on a new version that would address these issues. The link above is to our development server's working directory (viewable only on-campus), and will change continually as we evolve the project.