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Center for Health Informatics Webmaster

The Florida State University College of Information – Tallahassee, FL

May 2008 – August 2008

Job Duties

This position was a directed individual study where I was to develop a website for the Center of Health Informatics for the College of Information. My first duty with this position was to write up a project plan that detailed the upcoming design. This plan was to include information about the design, information about the project, details regarding menu layouts, as well as information such as marketing (this plan can be downloaded from the samples part below).

After completing the project plan, my next duty was to take the college's new possible design and customize and modify it to fit the needs of the new site. The new design the College is looking at using did not quite fit the needs for this site. However, the site still needed to look similar to the College's design. So, I had to make only minor modifications to the code, mainly moving the menu from a left side menu to a horizontal top bar. In doing these modifications, it was really the first time I got a chance to work with code written by another designer.

Once the design modifications were complete, I was responsible for creating the content for the site. I had to go and pull information from the various health informatics resources the college had and put them on the site. I also had to keep track and let my supervisor know which content I could not obtain on my own, content that he would need to provide me. I was not able to complete all the content due to the time constraints of the semester.

Finally, once the design was completed and some content was available, I was responsible for conducting pilot tests on the website. I tested a few people, asking them to navigate the site to see what they thought of it. This pilot testing was not that detailed, as I was requested to make it simple. It was no where near the depth of a usability test. I merely had the users try out the site to get feed back on what they thought could be added or changed. The users who tested it were undergraduate students, graduate students and doctoral students, all connected to health informatics. Once the testing was done, I made some minor adjustments per the advice of the users.

Technical Skills Acquired

• Modifying Another Designer's Code - I have dabbled with other people's code before, mostly just to dissect it to learn how they did things, but this was the first time I had to really use someone else's code. I had to take the code created by the college's Webmaster and modify it to meet the needs for this new site. In doing this, I learned that everyone's code is completely different. The organization, naming conventions, set up and CSS styles were done differently than I how do them. I was aware that other code was going to be different, but it is very interesting to actually see it in front of you. It was good to get this experience though as I am sure I will no doubt be editing other people's code down the road.
• Advanced XHTML and CSS - While working with this site I solidified my XHTML and CSS skills. I had worked with a CSS-only flyout menu before, but for this site, I had to convert the left side navigation to a top bar navigation, so the flyouts had to change as well. With this design, I also learned a very key addition to my skills. I learned how to get a fully fluid, all CSS, three-column layout. I learned an easy way to obtain this so called CSS "Holy Grail." A co-worker brought this to my attention and I was amazed that it never dawned on me to try. Instead of using complex CSS to try and it get as some sites showcase, it is easier to just make a background image for the three columns and set it as the background for the page wrapper, thus making the illusion that there are three-columns. The skills I learned here have really polished off my abilities, and I feel I now have a broad scope of XHTML and CSS knowledge.

Transferable Skills Acquired

• Conducting Pilot Tests - I had prior experiences doing usability tests in several of my classes, especially usability tests on websites. So I felt pretty comfortable doing the pilot tests for this site. However, it was a bit different then the usability tests I had done. It was different in that I directly asked what the user liked and disliked and asked what they would like to see, rather than just giving them a task and recording their actions. So with these pilot tests I was able to expand my horizons a bit and learn how to do a different type of website testing. Combine this with my knowledge of usability tests and I have gained a good solid understanding of some of the website testing methods.
• Writing Project Plans - I also had some experience writing project plans before, but again mostly just in my classes. This plan was a bit different however in that it needed to be catered to a website. I had to write up it differently than my other plans. I had to include details about the design, information about possible options for the home page, even ideas for marketing the site. This project plan is something I will able to use again in the future when I go to make other sites, making this experience very helpful.

Samples

• CHI Website Design - This is design for the Center for Health Informatics. I took the possible new template for the College of Information, designed by their Webmaster, and I modified it to fit the needs of the Center for Health Informatics.
  
  Visit the Center for Health Informatics Site
  
  
• Website Development Project Plan - This document is the project plan that I wrote for the website design. It includes screenshots of the template, includes more detailed information about the project, describes the layout in detail, as well as includes what content I was going to need from outside sources.

  Download Website Development Project Plan (PDF) - (339 KB)