December 2020 Website Meeting

Notes

Use of audio clips in content

We began the meeting by re-visiting the discussion of adding audio clips to content such as profile pages and news stories. Late last month, the school added a student profile that originally included links to audio clips from an interview with that student interspersed throughout the text. The web team identified this as being an accessibility and (potentially) a usability issue that warranted further thought and discussion.

In our meeting, Shawn was emphatic that the use of audio clips in these circumstances makes a lot of sense, especially given the current situation where video is not as easily attainable or producible for content like profiles. However, we definitely want to make sure transcripts are available for audio and video clips that are included on our websites. The web team was then interested in making sense out of how the school is planning to use audio going forward. Shawn also noted that a refresh of the News system is in the plans for 2021. This has been in the works for a few years now, but that project has been moved to the back burner multiple times, as other higher priority projects come up. Work on enhancing this system should start in the spring, and some of the new features planned for News include an increased ability to share stories across units of the campus and university, as well as concepts like including downloadable media kits alongside stories.

Nikky said that the school doesn’t really have set plans for using audio going forward, and that stories already in the pipeline don’t include plans for audio at this time. However, that doesn’t mean that the school doesn’t want to explore and use audio clips in pages in the future.

Shawn agreed that audio clips add a welcome variation to content on the site. But he noted that the ways in which different browsers handle audio files is something to keep in mind. Some browsers will navigate to a separate blank page with only the audio player present. Others will force the user to download the audio file and open it in a separate program. Neither represent a good or ideal user experience. However, the web team have some ideas on how to do this better, and more importantly their ideas include ensuring that transcripts are offered along with the clips themselves. Shawn also talked about the possibility of including these clips in a sidebar of a profile or story in addition to sprinkling them throughout the text of the page.

As part of the next steps to come up with a solution, Shawn thought it would be beneficial to for the team to have access to the clips that are already available in order to experiment with new solutions. He also mentioned that Tara and Dave already use certain services that can accept media clips and produce transcripts based off of them.

Nikky mentioned that they had removed the audio clips from the Nicholas McCardle profile, but that a separate news story focusing on Stacy Tressler still has audio clips in it. She says that they will check to see if the audio clips from the McCardle profile are still in the media folder, and if not that they will supply them to to the web team.

Follow-up: After the meeting, Jessica reached out to everybody and said that the audio files are indeed in the “Media” section of Umbraco, in a folder entitled “Profiles”.

Mask survey webpage

Rachel has been working with the school to develop a custom marketing page to present the on-going results of a mask-wearing study conducted by the university. The initial period of observation for the study was limited to the fall. However, it looks as though the study will continue in another phase this spring. As such, while the current mask study page is static and hard-coded, plans are being made to make this page editable in Umbraco, and the school may be able to enter the spring data into Umbraco directly so that the page can be updated quickly.

The web team considered and discussed different methods of presenting the survey’s data using different chart formats. It was important to make sure the data being presented was easily digestible by a site visitor. Rachel and the web team focused on two types of chart styles for viewing stats. The stats in the study included which participants actually wore a mask, who wore it properly, and what types of mask materials were the masks in  use. One chart style considered was a simple bar chart that consisted of a weekly breakdown of two data points, such as wore a mask compared to no mask. Another format considered was a bar chart with a single, full-height bar that representing each week. That bar was then segmented to represent the percentage of survey participants who either conformed or not to a specific criteria. The former method was good for presenting the raw numbers, while the latter was good for conveying overall trends. The second style being percentage-based, also had the benefit of standardizing the scale of data. The number of survey participants varied from week to week, and having a percentage-based design meant that participant count didn’t necessarily affect the bars’ sizes.

Nikky felt that the percentages carried more weight than the raw totals, and the design of the segmented bar chart nicely accounts for identifying the date ranges being represented by the individual bars. She wondered how a new semester’s data will play into the design: will the spring weeks be represented in an additional section on the page, or will the data be added to the existing charts? Rachel seemed to think that adoption of the segmented bar chart design would allow us to continue adding more data to the existing charts.

Shawn wanted to explore the idea of combining the raw data with key milestones and event-specific data points. He thought that figuring out a method to highlight when certain directives from the university were put out, or when President Gee released a statement related to the pandemic and/or the importance of masks, could be helpful in conveying the reasons for certain trends in the data. Nikky stressed that the study was done to highlight the benefits of wearing masks to keep us healthy, but also as a way to keep in-person classes a possibility. Communication is a key part of the study. Shawn emphasized that he wasn’t advocating the need for large blocks of text to be wedged between the charts, but having data like key dates when the university had to take certain actions would provide some context to the data. In the spring, he said it will be interesting to see trends in mask-wearing, as vaccines become available and widely distributed. Maybe a timeline of events accompanying the charts would be an option to explore.

Rachel rounded out the discussion by stating that the newer versions of the charts that she was developing are much more accessible and usable. That being said, should wondered if she should convert the existing charts to use this new design. Nikky was supported this idea.

School anniversary preparation

Nikky informed the group that the School of Public Health will be celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2022. She brought this up so that we can begin brainstorming and planning ways to highlight this when the time comes. Shawn said that he will put in a reminder to begin discussion on ideas to support this in future meetings.

“Discover” page updates and social media accounts

Nikky then brought up the content adjustments she had requested and that Jason had made to the “Discover” page. She wanted to highlight some issues with the “Connect with us” bars, not only on this page but on the home page and other landing pages throughout the website. At one point, the YouTube button had pointed to the campus’s YouTube account and not the school’s. To Jason’s knowledge, he was able to change this link to point to the Public Health YouTube page on a site-wide basis.

Nikky also wanted to know how to go about adding additional social media accounts to display in these areas: is that something she can do herself, or does that require the web team to accomplish? The school has Instagram and LinkedIn profiles that could be linked to in these bars. Jason says that the capability doesn’t currently exist to add those, but he will work on enabling that.

January’s meeting

Due to Shawn’s unavailability during the first full work week of January, he asked to reschedule the January 7 meeting. With there being no objections, he changed the date of the meeting to be January 12 at 2:30 p.m.

“Who We Are” profiles and departments

Jessica wanted to point out that in the new “Who We Are” profiles, there is a “Department” field for staff members. The possible values for this field are limited to the academic departments that are shown on the site, but the school would like to highlight staff who are not in those specific departments. This issue was brought up previously, but was never resolved. Rachel said that she will look into a solution and get back to Jessica as soon as possible.