LiveBlog: Incremental Redesign
Written November 5th, 2007 by Aaron Holbrook10:45 Michael Gowan and Bart Hubbard from Duke Health (WebiScope members) are giving the presentation on incremental redesign approach to redesigning a website.
11:00 incremental design: the smart way to redesign your web site
michael gowan
bart hubbard
michael gowan
incremental design
*duke health.org*
* 3 fte’s
* 3 contractors
* centralized CMS
* wanted to add functionality
bart hubbard
* not starting from scratch
* prioritize and pick problems to fix
* can still utilize site while you’re resolving problems
benefits:
* show results more quickly
* can build upon past experiences as you move along
*why this was smart*
* time to launch: 3 months
* 90 service sections
* established template for service sections
* provided new framework
* rolled it out on one service, then moved on to other services
*where to start?*
* usability
* metrics
* internal needs
11:01 They’re taking some questions that have just arisen:
Q: How’ve you handled public announcement about change?
A: Waited till the last change – the home page changed. Home page is the public face / didn’t need to tell visitors about the little changes.
Q: Did you announce in-house about changes?
A: Per service line as we were changing.
11:03 Added some improvements. Created a new homepage for each location, added related links for each location, used google maps tool, changed ‘search for locations near you’.
I think this is a great idea as long as your backend can support prolonged growth/use. If you’re at the point where it would be easier and cheaper to bulldoze the whole site, I think incremental design wouldn’t be useful.
I’m really impressed by how interactive Mike and Bart are being with the presentation. They’re actively taking questions (which I’ll try to keep track of).
11:07
Six months into the project, launched six new sections.
Health Library: Before
* Value added section
* no cross selling
Health Library: After
* larger fonts
* related links
* add to any page
11:15
Changed video format, from quicktime to more compatible flash format.
Use a one-on-one user testing, defined tasks, and a clickable prototype which is a low res version of the site.
Moray: track user clicks as well as video of user.
They did user testing for any of the significant changes, or changes to navigation to ensure that users were not confused and to help lead them to where they either needed to go.
11:20
They really focused (on their homepage) on the four things people want to do.
* find a physician
* get directions to a location
* explore patient care services
* make an appointment
This is really key, and I think not enough websites focus on not just what flavor they happen to be currently offering, but what the actual visitor is looking for.
A couple benefits they saw immediately were that they had a fresh homepage without going through the pain of site redesign. Branding improvements were cascaded throughout the site – CSS is awesome! 
Remind stakeholders about requirements before sharing the final product.
11:23
Some lessons learned:
* Maintain same team resources throughout each increment.
* If requirements change, go back to phase 1.
* Educate stakeholders on process and comprehensive plan.
* Involve developers from the beginning.
* Build what you can maintain. – Haha, Bart said this could be it’s own talk. I totally agree – need to really look at this in depth.
11:26
Bart loves to follow consistency between different pages. For example the related links box not shifting by even a pixel between the health library and a service line or location homepage. I agree 100% – once you’ve shown something to the users, don’t deviate from what you taught them.
11:27
Will this really work for you? (or your site?)
* Need an existing site
* small, but not too small, web team
* impatient people
Q & A:
Q: Why do you think video on the web is expensive?
A: Our dream is creating video
Q: You have a CMS, are you using the same CMS?
A: Worked within the same system. Use a framework/toolkit, can develop parts for the CMS as needed. Zope is the name.
Q: You said the site was successful – what are the metrics?
A: Michael: jan 06, start. pageviews are up 46%, locations 68% increase in PV, services up 72%, health libraries 76%
Q: When did you do user testing, was it per increment, and how expensive was it?
A: Used 6 users per increment, 5 to 6K per increment.
(Question asked for Thomas)
Alright – I’m out, great job guys! Good to see this is definitely a possibility. Really enjoyed your presentation, and quite impressed with the new look and feel.
Feel free to leave comments about this LiveBlog – was it helpful? Would you like to ask some specific questions of the presenters?
Stay tuned, we’ve got more presentations coming up!
November 5th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I know I can talk to them later, Aaron, but it might be a good question to ask if they did ongoing usability during their incremental design. A criticism of mine for incremental design is that it confuses the visitors. Did they do any ongoing usability to ensure visitors weren’t chronically confused?
November 5th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
They’re talking about that right now actually.
They did user testing for any of the big changes. Great question though!
November 5th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Interesting. That must have taken a lot of manpower and money to do so much user testing.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
They’ve got a freelancer to do it – I’ll ask.
November 5th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
This is so interesting. One of the reasons I’m not there this year (besides the fact that Vegas absolutely overwhelms me) is that we’re doing usability testing this week with patients and potential patients. We’ve hired http://usabilitysciences.com to conduct the testing for us.
This is in addition to the information architecture consultations we had with Nielsen group late last year.
I figure I’m going to learn a lot here and radically end up changing our site….
November 5th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Our freelancer has degrees related to usability, and is expert at running user testing sessions. She also has a big database of potential users for all sorts of targeted testing based on demographics.
Anyway – we user test significant changes, and our feeling that even just a little bit of user testing is infinitely better than none. Like we mentioned today, we try to consolidate testing of multiple new features as the same time to save money, too.
See you guys at the dinner tonight.
November 5th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Yea, exactly – even a little bit of user testing is better than not doing any. Hi Pamela – glad to hear we were able to provide some insight into the different sessions. Hope your user testing goes well!
Maybe we’ll see you next year
November 5th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
If you’re willing to divulge, what were the results of your user testing, Bart? Did you notice any drop whatsoever in the usability of your navigation in terms of the switch between the two designs? Further, did you see an increase in either user confusion or complete drop-off of use from some users when they encountered the switch?