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September 30, 2005
OIT Portal Group Releases myUMBC "Beta"
Following the "sneak peek" of a new portal announced Aug. 30, OIT's portal development team has released the myUMBC "beta" for general use and feedback. To login, visit http://mybeta.umbc.edu.
What's New
* myUMBC beta is now running on the uPortal open source framework;
* The new "Courses" and "Communities" tabs link directly to each users available Blackboard sites;
* Documentation, FAQs and updates about future releases will be available on the "Support" tab.
What You Can Do
Our goal for this first release was to provide all personal information and functions available in the current myUMBC, but do so on the new uPortal framework. If you find otherwise, please let us know by providing feedback in the comment form below.
Future Plans
* Study user feedback & performance (October)
* Ongoing updates, fixes, enhancements using this blog as a "change log" (Fall 2005)
* Determine whether the beta or current versions becomes default (December-January)
If you have questions, comments, suggestions or concerns, please respond using the form below or send email to helpdesk@umbc.edu.
Posted by fritz at 2:41 PM | Comments (8)
September 8, 2005
Stepping Back and Looking Forward
Okay, we heard you, and here are ways you said the new UMBC homepage and website could be improved:
* Launch both together;
* Improve design to reflect UMBC's energy and quality;
* Use more campus photos, similar to the new About UMBC;
* Make myUMBC a more prominent homepage link;
* Consider vertical scrolling layout;
* Study peers and competitors;
* Tighten programming to adhere to contemporary web standards.
So, we’re stepping back and will launch a new UMBC web presence in Summer 2006—homepage and all. We’ve turned off comments to the original "sneak peak" post, but if you’d like to learn what we plan to do (and offer new comments) use the form below. Future updates will appear on this blog and be linked to “About This Site” on the current homepage.
To prepare for the entire site redesign, a collaborative web team known as “Emedia” (consisting of staff from the Offices of Institutional Advancement and Information Technology) will reflect on comments about the new homepage “sneak peek,” including follow up emails to those who offered comments (and are willing to talk to us some more).
We had also planned to do the following, but will announce and report on them in this blog during the 2005-06 academic year:
* Re-convene a campus web advisory group consisting of students, faculty, staff, alumni and other campus stakeholders;
* Share results of needs analysis interviews with selected campus groups from 2004-2005 as well as future web usability interviews;
* Conduct peer and competitor site benchmarking studies, similar to those done for the 1998 and 2000 homepage redesigns (more info);
* Conduct search engine and site traffic analyses to see what users are searching for and the sites they frequent the most;
* Develop an accessible and standards-compliant web site.
In retrospect, a lot has changed since UMBC launched an entirely new site in 1998. Our site is bigger, our users are more web savvy and web technologies have grown in complexity and are still maturing. As a result, our process for redesigning UMBC’s web presence needs to change as well. While we have listened to feedback in the past, we need to listen some more and then do our best to provide a site that meets the original goals for the site:
* Focus on information needs of all users;
* Improve ease of use and navigation;
* Improve and maintain a consistent UMBC identity throughout the site.
Okay, let us know what you think, and if you’d like to participate in the various user research activities described above. You can use the comment form below or send email to webteam@umbc.edu.
Posted by fritz at 7:40 PM | Comments (2)