About the UM People Site Project

In September 2014, a UMIT and University Communications leadership decision was made to move toward replacing and upgrading the University's online directory search. This page summarizes the project.

The Department of University Communications Web and Digital Communications and Marketing team has led the project with monthly review and feedback collected via the University's Web Advisory group, a working group consisting of marketing and communications touch-points from 22 main University areas including all colleges and schools, administrative divisions, and constituency-based organizations. The project was formalized into four phases:

  1. Intake
  2. Strategy
  3. Design
  4. Implementation

Intake: (Early 2015 - July 2015)

Intake began in early 2015 with focus group sessions with all college and school communication and marketing leads.

Intake included:
  • Formal collection of requirements gathered from multiple Web Advisory meetings
  • Focus group sessions with each college and school
  • Web Metrics
  • Benchmarks of 60+ AAU institutions and UMIT peers
  • Usability testing of people pages on our existing UM sites
  • A content audit of existing people information on UM's top-tier and college/school sites
  • A technical audit of existing people information touch-points at UM and an evaluation of potential sources of truth that could enable as much self-service as possible

Strategy: (September 2015 - December 2015)

Strategy milestones included:

  • Confirming Workday as best source of self-service controls
  • Confirming Hannon Hill Cascade Server as best resource for "advanced" people information to be collected and for people lists to be built and managed for display on Website and digital signage
  • Began custom specification documentation for features of UM People Website with feedback from Web Advisory group members
  • Worked through multi-port wireframe iterations, collecting feedback from Web Advisory Group members

Design and Implementation: (January 2016 - November 2017)

Design milestones included:

  • Design iterations for multiple-viewports of People Profile pages, People Lists, and the People Site designed and presented capturing feedback from Web Advisory group recommendations

Implementation milestones have included:

  • Establishing data feed and business rules continuity with Workday
  • Building site and all elements in this staging environment
  • Developing training materials for People Profile Contributors and scheduling Sneak Peak events
  • Running beta testing in our staging environment