Role
I worked as an in-house designer, and administrator for the core front-facing website, the faculty & staff intranet website, as well as for sub-sites and several initiative sites in the College of Education at DePaul University. I've worked on many projects since, however, looking back, this is still some of my favorite work as I really got to use my finest skills on the regular, in a fast-paced environment. I enjoyed being a lead on these projects and worked across many teams and departments.

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Context

The college had never had a dedicated web professional in-house and the college’s websites had been in the hands of administrative assistants. As I studied the main front-facing site inside and out, and met with various editors and departments, I learned that the editors weren’t comfortable with working on this platform. In fact, most people resented it and tried to avoid it. The result was a piecemeal website that was difficult to navigate. I learned that there was quite a bit of work that would need to be done in addition to the day-to-day needs and inquiries.

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The University had also started a multi-year migration project and was going to move every site from Serena Collage to Microsoft’s SharePoint. I took advantage of this migration and convinced departments to look at some of their web pages, as a looming ‘the more organized we are, the quicker and easier the migration will be‘. It helped motivate people to work with me to make overall large improvements that contributed to a better, more organized and user-friendly website. I went through the site and met with every department to comb through the content, ask about improvements from their perspectives, and re/organize, and design cleaner, more clear pages and content. When we did finally migrate the site, I was told by the migration team, that it was “..the fastest migration they had had to date” and they thanked me. I was happy that my hard work paid off.

 

Some of the work I did

• Mapped out the ideal information architecture, site map, and top-tier navigation and worked with necessary folks to revamp and execute changes

• Expanded global functionality by creating banners, more streamlined 2nd level nav, and (new) 3rd and 4th level navigation

• Consulted with and integrated external applications and new web platforms (was one of three on the beta team for the university’s new Localist events calendar)

• Focused in on various sections of the website to reorganize, streamline and hopefully make something better one section at a time; including production of new content and designs when necessary

 

Other Notable Things

• Organized photo-shoots and set up systems for media production and ongoing management

• Oversaw student workers to help with different projects such as photography and coding.

• Created a Web Requests section on our website for people to fill out forms, that would get logged, assessed, and prioritized through a protocol.

• Created said protocol for making decisions working with the Associate Dean to present at bi-weekly Deans & Chairs meeting

• Created a semi-formal web team to meet to discuss current happenings with web projects

• Assisted with the SharePoint migration and roll-out and was the go between for the College and the Migration Team

 

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