It's been a busy summer, and things are progressing nicely with the Web Refresh.

The two Social Media workshops were well-attended. On-demand video recordings of the sessions are available to members of the campus community; please email Melissa Bergem (melissa.bergem@csuci.edu) to request access.

We continue to work with Stamats on a weekly basis to iron out issues that arise as we refine our information architecture. Members of the core team have conferred with peers at UC San Diego and Cal Poly Pomona about their recent experiences with deploying responsive web site designs.

Over the summer, three style tiles were developed to visually capture the identity and mood of CI. These examples were reviewed by the core team and presented to the President for feedback. Ultimately one was selected to best represent CI as a connected, 21st-century campus of innovation, and the selected mood will be used to guide visual design decisions moving forward.

As the visual design continues to take shape, members of the core team have continued to meet with subject matter experts from key campus areas to gather feedback and demonstrate progress on our functional prototype, including new functionality that will be available for helping students match their interests to the programs offered at CI. Templates and a web style guide are now under development and testing by members of the design team.

The team expects to go-live with a public beta web site in October to obtain further feedback from the campus community and enable further refinement before go-live.

Finally, in support of creating a more mobile-friendly campus (and in parallel with the Web Refresh project) the Division of Technology & Communication is currently researching solutions to support creation and deployment of a campus native mobile app for iPhone and Android platforms. Visit the CI Mobile Strategy web site for further details.

• Thursday, June 13, 9:00am - 12:00pm
• Thursday, June 13, 1:00 - 4:00pm 

I'm pleased to report that the CI Web Refresh team made good progress this spring. Here's a snapshot of what was completed since the last update: 

1. Stamats helped us complete usability tests of our prototypes on both mobile and laptop platforms to verify how easily prospective students could complete certain tasks, such as finding information about what academic programs are available, or determining cost of attendance. The results of the tests have been used to further refine the organization and content of our new site.

2. We hosted two "Writing for the Web" workshops for creators of web content. (One of the writing workshop sessions was recorded, and is available for on-demand viewing by University employees; please contact Peter Mosinskis at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu to obtain access.) 

3. We worked with Stamats to re-write 50 pages of web content from a cross-section of key University web sites to define the our web site content style and tone in support of our new web site strategy. These pages are being shared with key stakeholders for feedback, and will be incorporated into new web sites. (Campus organizations can contact me at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu to review this content.) 

4. Our team has built 16 web pages in a grey-scale, HTML wire frame format. These examples encompass the CI home page and main navigation elements, and have been used to test and refine  the user experience of our new site.

5. We've scheduled a "Social Media workshop" for Thursday, June 13. This workshop is meant to help social media authors across campus to learn to communicate more effectively. (Interested in attending? Contact Melissa Bergem at melissa.bergem@csuci.edu by June 11 to RSVP). For those that can't attend, a video recording will be available after the workshop.  

So what's left to be done? To get a better idea, our team completed an inventory of pages affected by the refresh effort, and here's some of what we learned: 

• To launch only an updated University home page and top-level pages, our team must review, modify or build from scratch at least 34 web sites and web applications.
• To launch a new CI home page and 5 top-level pages, our team must do the same for at least 100 web sites and web applications.
• To complete the project, our team must migrate over 200 unique web sites and web applications comprising over 27,000 unique digital assets (including web pages, electronic documents, and digital images) into the new web site design.

• the build out and testing of web site prototypes for the University home page and top-level pages
• graphic design of web themes and styles, including color, texture, typography, and layout
• re-writes of existing web site content in coordination with campus stakeholders
• further testing of prototypes on a number on traditional and mobile platforms by various audience groups
• optimization of web content and design delivery for mobile platforms
• updates to the CI Web Style Guide and web site templates