And this, in the immortal words of Frank Zappa, is "the crux of the biscuit" (See "Apostrophe", truly a classic.) A nice easy starting point would seem to be developing a set of shared vocabulary / taxonomy for navigation based on user research. That might, eventually, get us to something like shared landing pages, etc. I've experienced a few failed attempts at getting something like this going, both during the metadata analyisis of the UMContent pilot, and otherwise. I've pitched doing some sort of U-wide "Customer Carewords" analysis (See Gerry McGovern <http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/>), for example, that would provide a user research basis for a U-wide information architecture. The problem is that it costs time and money, and it seems hard for units to find the time and money to spend on U-wide integration that may benefit the user, but doesn't always end up pleasing / benefitting each participating unit. At the Internal Communications Network<http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/faculty-staff/toolkit/UR_ARTICLE_144352.html>meeting last week it was noted that there is quite a bit of real user research being done, but it is almost always done with site-specific goals in mind. So many of our sites have become more usable and more task-oriented, yet the mosaic as a whole remains unanalyzed. I'm not casting stones here; I've been unable to make time in my work to make this happen. I firmly believe that the sort of integration we are talking about will happen when we have solid user experience research to help us convince the decision-makers that the hard work of content collaboration and coordination is worth the effort. The Catch 22 is that umn.edu domain-wide user experience research doesn't seem to be anybody's job. OK, I've ranted enough. Back to working on my own "Cosmic Debris"... Santiago On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Sara Hurley <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > I have sort of a practical question about this (not disagreeing with either > of you on this, and the usefulness of this, and not wanting to be a downer) > - > What content do we collaborate on? Who makes the decision? What staff is > responsible for coordinating efforts? Who owns the content? > > I know that isn't the fun stuff to think about, but it's one of the things > that stands in the way of system-wide stuff. And as someone who has > recently been a part of a college-wide web integration, managing that kind > of content integration is really, really tough. Especially when non-tech > stakeholders get involved in protecting "their" content. > > S > > > Brian Hayden wrote: > >> On Jan 27, 2010, at 2:59 PM, Zachary Johnson wrote: >> >> Valid point... and to support what both you and Andre have said, maybe we >>> need the opportunity to setup landing pages for relevant content more >>> automatically... >>> >>> umn.edu/H1N1 could bring users to a page with important content and >>> links to other UMN sites for more details. >>> >>> something like that? >>> >> >> I think that'd be fantastic. >> >> Here's a hackish thought for you... there could be UMN wiki pages that are >> just aggregators of links around the U for specific topics... and each of >> these could have a z.umn.edu short url, like... z.umn.edu/h1n1 ... >> >> Sorry, my inner Rube Goldberg took over for a second. ;) >> >> -Brian >> > > -- > -- > > Sara Hurley, MFA > 612-625-7709 > > Web Coordinator > http://cpheo.sph.umn.edu > Digital Learning Group (DLG) > School of Public Health > University of Minnesota > -- Santiago Fernández-Giménez information architect / web project manager Academic Support Resources University of Minnesota - Twin Cities [log in to unmask] 612-625-6423