HR Communications is hard at work with a team from CIT to do initial research to create a new and much improved Cornell Human Resources website.
Built nearly eight years ago, the site suffers from a number of increasingly problematic issues. Foremost among those is the fact that the current site does not feature responsive design, which would make it easier for users across varying platforms and devices — especially mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones — to be able to access and effectively use the site functions. Another problem is that as the site has grown over the years, its size has become unmanageable — there are over 2,000 pages of information! This bulkiness has caused resources to be buried and sometimes dated or difficult for users to find.
But the biggest issue is that the technology used to build the site has become outdated. The new site will be built with a state of the art content management system which will bring it into alignment with other Cornell websites, as well as those of peer institutions. CMS will enable the new HR website to be much more dynamic and easily updated and organized by administrators.
You may have seen or participated in some of the latest round of surveys being used to better understand the needs of HR website users. Data received from these surveys, combined with an examination of user behaviors through Google analytics, is invaluable to determining how to make improvements that will cause the site to be more intuitive and efficient. Among the findings that will shape the way the new site is built is understanding the different needs of specific user groups. For example, what sort of information is needed by a newly hired employee, a retiring faculty member, a longtime HR professional, or a typical staff member? How do different groups navigate to look for information? Making the site easier and more efficient for all user groups is a primary design goal.
The current phase of research into the behavior and needs of users and assessing the exact breadth and content of the HR website is expected to continue into July of this year. These results will then guide the redesign and testing phase, with launch of the new site projected for September of 2017. In the meantime, we will be making improvements to the content and structure of the existing site as part of our overall content renovation.
Do you have ideas about what you’d like to see in the new HR website? Comments about what does or doesn’t work now? Suggestions for other sites to emulate? We’d love to hear what you have to say! Please contact Jennifer Lob at jennifer.lob@cornell.edu.
Built nearly eight years ago, the site suffers from a number of increasingly problematic issues. Foremost among those is the fact that the current site does not feature responsive design, which would make it easier for users across varying platforms and devices — especially mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones — to be able to access and effectively use the site functions. Another problem is that as the site has grown over the years, its size has become unmanageable — there are over 2,000 pages of information! This bulkiness has caused resources to be buried and sometimes dated or difficult for users to find.
But the biggest issue is that the technology used to build the site has become outdated. The new site will be built with a state of the art content management system which will bring it into alignment with other Cornell websites, as well as those of peer institutions. CMS will enable the new HR website to be much more dynamic and easily updated and organized by administrators.
You may have seen or participated in some of the latest round of surveys being used to better understand the needs of HR website users. Data received from these surveys, combined with an examination of user behaviors through Google analytics, is invaluable to determining how to make improvements that will cause the site to be more intuitive and efficient. Among the findings that will shape the way the new site is built is understanding the different needs of specific user groups. For example, what sort of information is needed by a newly hired employee, a retiring faculty member, a longtime HR professional, or a typical staff member? How do different groups navigate to look for information? Making the site easier and more efficient for all user groups is a primary design goal.
The current phase of research into the behavior and needs of users and assessing the exact breadth and content of the HR website is expected to continue into July of this year. These results will then guide the redesign and testing phase, with launch of the new site projected for September of 2017. In the meantime, we will be making improvements to the content and structure of the existing site as part of our overall content renovation.
Do you have ideas about what you’d like to see in the new HR website? Comments about what does or doesn’t work now? Suggestions for other sites to emulate? We’d love to hear what you have to say! Please contact Jennifer Lob at jennifer.lob@cornell.edu.