White Whale revamps Web site

Author: Katie Siegner

White Whale Web Services came to visit Middlebury on April 27 and 28, the first step in the College's Web makeover process that should be completed by Winter Term 2010.

College officials say that the current Middlebury home page is out-of-date and leaves much to be desired, prompting the creation of an Internet Strategy Task Force (ISTF) last spring. President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz charged the ISTF with the development of "a new technology platform to deliver the content of our Web site" that would entail the "updated design and information architecture of our Web properties."

The Web makeover project is progressing rapidly, according to an ambitious timeline that expects to launch the new site by the end of fall 2009, following the launch of the Monterey Institute for International Studies Web site in August.

The process of redesigning the Web site has been collaborative and open, partly "in reaction to the controversy over the maple leaf logo," which was adopted with little input from the College community, said Jason Mittell, associate professor of American Studies and Film and Media Culture and the primary faculty representative on the ISTF. The administration created three committees to oversee the Web redo project: the Requirements Committee, which met with various constituents around campus to establish what is needed from the new site, the Coordinating Committee, which deals with the administrative functions, and the Design and Information Architecture Committee.

Ryan Kellett '09.5 is a member of the Requirements and Coordinating Committees, and envisions a Web site that is "more reflective of the Middlebury community," as opposed to the current site, where "every page looks the same." Kellett has been involved in most stages of the process, which he stresses is designed to "bring in a lot of different people." The Web makeover project created its own blog on the Middlebury site to explain the process and provide the opportunity for student and faculty participation. Furthermore, the Coordinating Committee invited four vendors - firms in charge of designing the Web site - to the College to give open presentations about their design ideas and allowed the audience to vote for their favorite.

White Whale, a small company comprised of five people from Oakland, Calif. that specializes in college and university Web sites, received overwhelming support and was enthusiastically endorsed by Kellett and Mittell.

"White Whale understood what it meant to be at a college," said Mittell, whereas "the other firms could have been designing for any institution."

Kellett felt that this smaller firm was "innovative and fun" and "trying to be very consciously different from the corporate look." Because of the firm's small size, they only work with a few clients at a time, allowing them to focus more in depth on their specific projects.

White Whale will orchestrate the design and information architecture of the Web site, which encompasses the navigation within the site, how the pages fit together and content recommendations, among other things. Everything else (the implementation, the building of the site, etc.) will be done within the College by a team from Library and Information Services and the Office of Communications, which will result in significantly lower costs.

As part of the design process, White Whale came back to campus this week for what Mittell called "a sponge visit." The purpose of the visit was for the firm to gain a better sense of what defines the College in order to ascertain what the company should include the final design.

"This is the real kickoff to the project," said White Whale representative Tonya Langford. In visiting the College, she and her colleague Janie Porche hoped to learn as much as they could and talk to as many people as possible so that the end product will "feel like Middlebury." Langford and Porche were interested in "collecting different stories and voices" to make the new site an authentic representation of the College.

Right now, said Porche, their design ideas consist of a "pile of very incomplete fun sketches" based on the "bits and pieces" of information they gathered during their visit. Once they absorb all the information, they will begin to envision a more comprehensive plan for the new site.

Although the specifics of the site design are still up in the air, Mittell identified several general features of the new site, such as customizable home pages and tagging, which will allow students to "access the latest news on events that tie to their interest." The functionality of the College Web site will thus be transformed, and the site will be used more as a community tool.

The Web makeover project seeks to create "a document that is native to the Web," said Mittell, rather than one in which large bodies of text have been copied and pasted onto the page.

Because of the fast-paced timeline for the project, much of the work will be done over the summer, but again, the transparent attitude of the White Whale employees mirrored that of the project's working group. Langford and Porche said they "welcome feedback" and will be posting design updates online through Facebook groups and blogs.

"It's going to become a modern Web site," said Porche, and accordingly both White Whale and the working group at the College are striving to utilize all the technological tools available to make the project as open and transparent as possible.