Shared Stories Lab Website
The Shared Stories Lab website was a fitting final project for my experience in the MATC and for ending my time at Boise State. Part of my job as Sr Comm Coordinator, and then Creative Services Lead for Extended Studies at Boise State, was spending a lot of time keeping the division’s web pages updated, and migrating them to the new theme in 2019. Time to build another Boise State web asset? Wordpress, come at me!
As for the more technical aspects of building a website, I used skills in web accessibility, user experience, rhetoric, and plain language in the design. And the Shared Stories Lab is just a darn cool project. I’m happy to have played a part in moving the project’s mission forward and hopefully sharing information that will encourage more people to get involved. Read my full project reflection below.
Shared Stories Lab Sitemap
Shared Stories Lab Website
Artifacts
Shared Stories Lab Website Reflection
In spring and summer 2019 I took part in a fascinating project: Shared Stories Lab. Shared Stories Lab is a partnership between Boise State’s English department and the College of Innovation and Design. In this reflection I’ll explain more about the project and my role, how I built the Shared Stories Lab website, and what I might have done differently.
Rhetorical Situation
Shared Stories Lab is, in the simplest of terms, a Vertically Integrated Project (VIP), or a research undertaking that allows students to earn credit by partnering with faculty researchers on a project. The Shared Stories Lab (SSL) is a project meant to create an oral history archive containing stories of Boise State students, staff and faculty. Sharing stories has been shown to increase a sense of well-being and belonging among minority groups on campus. Through the oral history archive, SSL hopes to create greater empathy and understanding in the campus community and explore oral history’s impact on campus climate.
Summer 2019 was the project’s first semester, so all students were involved in the ideation phase--shaping and developing what the project would become. I was specifically involved in building a fundraising plan, seeking grants and honing the project’s fundraising language. During summer 2019 (my second semester of involvement in the project), I was responsible for creating the SSL website, which is the focus of this reflection.
The SSL website caters to anyone who is curious about SSL, and the homepage includes a brief explanation of the project, clickable tiles that offer different methods of involvement, and one recorded story. The “How it Works” page explains more about why and how stories are collected. The “Campus Stories” page includes four video stories. The “About Us” page offers more information on the faculty researchers and in-depth information on student involvement. Finally, the “Get Involved” page includes a simple form which interested people can fill out to get more information.
As the project moves forward, the website’s focus may shift to soliciting stories or to cater to researchers who want to use the archive. And that’s the beauty of the web--as the project changes, it can shift and change to fulfill various purposes and the needs of varied audiences.
Strengths/Weaknesses
The SSL website is straightforward, simple, and easy to navigate. The ease of use is likely due in part to the fact that the whole site consists of only four pages, but after wireframing and categorizing content, additional pages were not necessary. The content’s tone is relatable and the microcopy is well-written. I used the Boise State WordPress template to the best of my ability and leveraged it to focus on the essential parts of the project, and give visitors a clear path of engagement.
Another strength of the SSL website is that it’s accessible. The site’s accessibility is in part due to the Boise State Wordpress template, but the template can’t ensure complete accessibility. After working on Extended Studies and Online Degree Programs pages for my job at Boise State, completing Boise State’s Micro-Accessibility Web Certification, and taking classes on web accessibility through the Technical Communications program, I was fully prepared to create a well thought out, accessible site. The site has important features like explanatory buttons, descriptive link text, proper heading levels and alternative text on images.
As for weaknesses, the site’s simplicity may be the biggest weakness. There’s not a lot of information available since the project is still in its infancy, and the site’s content assumes some level of reader familiarity with Boise State and the VIP program. I also don’t love how every page looks, but the look of each page is due to the Boise State Wordpress theme. Working within the theme, I felt I chose panels (elements users can plug into each page) wisely. On the same note, the site is not incredibly user-friendly on the back end, but again that’s not something that was within my control due to the Wordpress theme.
What I Would Change
The biggest change I would make if I was creating the website again is to do UX research prior to creating the site. Time constraints didn’t allow thorough UX research, but I would have liked to have more perspective and review of the proposed site structure than just that of the two faculty researchers involved with SSL. In addition to more research during the website’s wireframing and structuring phases, I would have liked to have more autonomy over each page’s look and included elements. However, the Wordpress theme that Boise State uses is quite limited in offering options for page layout.
Boise State OIT also does a quality assurance (QA) check on every new Boise State site before it goes live, and I was pleased to find that there were only three minor items on the QA report that needed to be updated. Having only a few updates was very gratifying, and affirmed that I did a good job creating the site, both from quality and accessibility perspectives. We did make the suggested changes to the site.
What I Learned
Creating the SSL website reinforced the fact that creating even a simple website is a lot of work. The amount of planning that goes into even a four-page website is significant. There’s so much to consider: ensuring information isn’t repeated on multiple pages, making sure the tone matches across the site, considering how a user will move through the site and how they might like to engage...it’s a lot of work. However, as a culminating project for my MA, the SSL website was kind of a perfect case. It allowed me to use what I learned in so many classes from UX design to web accessibility, and even simply considering an audience and the audience’s needs as I began the task. It was wonderful to put all that knowledge to work in creating a simple site and it was a very rewarding and confidence-building process. All that said, I’m glad it was a simple website!