Amy Thomas | Senior Designer

The Department needed a system that made it easy for users to find out who supports who and how to contact each person. We started with a print version of the face sheet and wanted to make something more interactive from the printed document. 

I worked with a small team to conduct user research and find out what the needs of the different user roles were. I worked with the executive team to define the initial problem and get clarity on the desired outcome. Finally, I worked with the individual department units to refine the deliverables for each associated page. 

Biggest Challenge:

During our research, a few items came up as the most important to our user base:

1. easy way to find contact information and affiliation for administrative staff
2. easy way to find out which faculty member is supported by each admin
3. easy way to find the finance manager associated with a specific faculty
4. searchable repository for our weekly newsletters

Solution:

I used Drupal to build the system, since it had the most robust and customizable content management features. The main page mirrors the older printed face sheet that the system was based off. However, on this site, you can now click on a person’s name to drill down into their “personnel card” and see the details specific to them, including who they support and their contact information. Separate pages were added for searching finance managers and associated details and for searching the weekly newsletters.

(note: due to the internal nature of the site’s content, screenshots are limited and obscured)