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The CIOweb project was begun to serve two purposes. First, the University of Michigan Chief Information Officer needed a departmental site. The new CIO had grand schemes for uniting the various information technology (IT) units around campus into a federation. A first step was to create a symbolic home for this unification. Goal number two was to provide the world a showcase of what the U-M had done, and could do, at the bleeding edge of technology.
Though I was already committed full-time to other Web projects, I was able to participate in the initial development of the site, and in the achievement of at least the first of the CIO's goals. The team consisted of three members of the CIO staff (one a graphic designer), another designer, and myself. I filled the roles of information architecture and usability consultant, and of technical coordinator and coder. The site was built with modularity in mind. With a very short time frame for development, we had to take shortcuts in infrastructure which could be rectified later, but with no alteration apparent to the visitor. What would become a database of U-M IT projects was hard-coded as individual pages. A relatively complex graphic design was translated to the Web via a highly-heirarchical table structure, with a plan for simplifying later. The showcase element of the site was hinted at in the current site, though due to its difference in audience from the departmental site, I assumed a new site would be created to fulfill that goal. Though none of the team members had a significant percentage of their time dedicated to the project, we achieved the unveiling in just over 2 months. The site has been well received, and work continues in its evolution.
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