Renovating, Re-Grouping, Re-Shaping
The website of my office is now 8 years old. We came to the conclusion that it needs a brush-up, a fundamental renovation, because it has immensely grown and it is not always easy for surfers to find what they are looking for. Furthermore the ways people surf have changed and thus the demands of usability have changed, too. My web-team is setting up the technical infrastructure on a new system, now we want to do a re-engineering of the content structure, the design and the prioritisation of the contents: Not everything which is easily visible is also of the same relevance… We have studied the statistics, observed how the major flows of surfers behave, made quite some reflections, set up a team of specialists from the different departments…
Last Wednesday I had the first meeting, together with a colleague from marketing, with a specialist from a web agency accompanying us with the renovation of the website. He is a consultant and designer. We were discussing the perspectives the surfers seeking information might have. The designer proposed to use personas, fictional characters created to represent the different user types that might use our site. I found it fascinating, but in view of the complexity of the site there will probably be too many options. We were discussion re-grouping the existing contents. I realised how much I’m stuck with the structures I’m used to see – an outsider comes with totally different perspectives. The process brought me into some kind of a creative confusion, losing the sight of the greater vision in view of so many details to be considered. It reminded me of situations of transformation on the spiritual path. You sometimes go through times of confusion, where the path no longer is clear before your eyes and where things which for a long time were obvious no longer seem to be so. You are looking for new order systems which are more fitting for the demands of the time.
Thursday afternoon I had a meeting with the redactor of the communication section. She also has quite some web experiences, having worked in this area in the States for a while. I described her the situation and my process of confusion. She said, “Why don’t we group all the different fields in a matrix-like way according to what the people want to do: Just to get information, to get help from one of our offers, to support the work either by donations or by help – volunteer work, blood donation and the like.” It sounded very convincing. We re-grouped the major areas of the site, saw that it makes sense, but also, that new questions popped up. Will our system be so flexible to deal with such a re-mix of contents and demands?
Friday I submitted the ideas to the colleague from marketing and she was quite fascinated by the outcome. For next week we reserved a whole afternoon to work out the rearrangements of the whole site. I prepared cards for every page so that we can freely shift and re-group the contents. I though, sometimes in life it would be good to do such re-grouping and rearranging. It’s the Uranian energy which does this with us if we don’t do it ourselves. It fits very well into the present moment of the start of the new annual cycle with Aries, the fresh energy of beginning.
“Stairway to the sun”, in the park next to my office. Only one week ago we had icy weather with snow.
March 21st, 2010 at 12:56 pm
mersi pour tous les messages que vous m”envoyer et de lamour que vous envoyer a votre semblableje vous envoie mes amitiers mesamitiersmes amies