Nidhi Sethi

MEMORANDUM

Date : October 28, 2010

To: Dr. Jan Plane, Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, University Of Maryland –

College Park

From: Nidhi Sethi, Association for Women in Computing; Event Coordinator

Re: Proposal for AWC’s website redesign & Development : Developing a Student Centered

Website

Summary and Request for Proposal: (Problem/Solution/Benefits)

The Association for Women in Computing has done a wonderful job of keeping in contact those

females at UMD who have taken up a career in computer science. Now, in 2010, one of the

most preferred methods of communicating and researching is via the internet, and it is for this

reason that the AWC website needs a complete makeover. The AWC's website has not seen a

significant update in the last five years and plays a rather unhealthy role in new, enthusiastic

individuals looking for common grounds. Furthermore, AWC Maryland chapter is part of an

even bigger association; a poor website design will leave a bad impression on our Computer

Science program here at University of Maryland.

Request for Action

The project has been maintained largely through the efforts of a few dedicated members and

officers of AWC and has never had sufficient funding for more than small revisions and minor

technical problem solving. However, this is a very opportune time to undertake an evaluation

of the website that could guide and focus improvements in quality and utility. Still limited by

funding constraints, we can use the assistance of our current officers to get it done. To address
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these deficiencies, an AWC Website Redesign Team (WRT) should be formed to begin the

process of creating a more functional and user-friendly interface for the site users. All the

members and officers of AWC are eligible for nomination to the Website Redesign Team and

should be nominated for departmental leadership awards on completion of the project to value

their contribution.

The WRT will be responsible for ensuring that following methodologies are put to use for

gathering user requirements for the site redesign:

 Gather input for planned website re-design based in usability and usability testing

As part of the requirements gathering process, the WRT should create a website

redesign questionnaire survey in order to invite some feedback from the current officers

and members based on their experience with current website.

Usability and usability testing: An interdisciplinary research team should be formed in

association with the Human Computer Lab on campus under the supervision of

Professor Ben Bederson, chairperson of the HCI lab. As part of the ongoing research on

advanced user interfaces usability testing process at the HCL labs, an interdisciplinary

research team will assist in testing usability issues, and evaluating user performance

with the current website design based on the feedback from various focus groups.

In order to request the participation of the students in the requirements gathering process we

can:

 Put flyers at various places in the AV Williams building to educate our students about

the purpose of this survey and how it will help the WTR in redesigning the AWC website.

 Provide a link to the redesign questionnaire on the CS homepage.

 Announce the survey in the course mailing lists by the academic advisors.

During the requirements gathering process, students (our users) will follow a detailed guide and

checklist developed by the Website Redesign Team, ensuring that the feedback is received in an

appropriate manner. Further, as an incentive to students who participate, we will be providing

our students with free pizza and drinks.

Structure of Proposal

The proposal will give an in-depth evaluation of the requirement gathering process and the

detailed inputs from our users received during the said process. The evaluation will highlight

the features that our users think are important in a descending order of priority items.

Furthermore, the proposal will also compare the difficulty of the priority items and detail the

ones that are the most important from the design-and-utility point of view; difficulty of

implementation will give us a good estimate as to the time that should be devoted in order to

implement that particular feature.

While the design should be simple, the site needs to include the following in some fashion:

Home, Events (member and public), About the Club, About the Members, Application for

Membership, and Contact Us. Furthermore, these are some of the problems that our officers

identified at the last meeting. It was suggested that the redesign proposal should include the

following items in the order specified:

 Content management that will allow AWC Officers to post agendas and minutes and

make updates to pages after each meeting. This will make the site more current as staff

who are directly involved with the information presented will have control over its

presentation. It will provide for a direct interaction with social media such as facebook
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and Twitter so that updates to the website will automatically flow to the connected

social media sites. This will also serve to update our new members what we do and

keep them in the know about current AWC events.

 We have limited staff and financial resources, with limited time for web updates. As

such, it is essential that we have a website that can be easily updated by staff that has

little technical background.

 The use of iPhones and other Smartphones are becoming more and more prevalent on

campus and the redesign will render the website on those mobile devices compatible.

 The redesign should be integrated with facebook and twitter. The rationale behind this

idea is that most of our users are tech savvy and like to take advantage of facebook or

twitter as a means to engage and communicate with their friends. Even though it would

be a good idea to have this feature, it is not the most important feature to have.

The proposal will also highlight the Implementation Processes detailing the necessary steps to

making the solutions a reality. This will include a timeline for:

 The Usability Testing and requirement Testing Process.

 The cost incurred to invite participation during the process.

 The Description of the website redesign timeline.

 The estimated timeline to finish the implementation of the new website.

 The estimate timeline for extensive testing to see if user generated sequence of click

events works fine.

 Finally, proof-of-concept testing of the new website.

It is critical for the AWC to involve female student leaders in the redesign decisions being made;

after all, AWC exists to support the female students in computing on campus.

The AWC is hopeful that instituting these new redesign suggestions will enhance the promotion

of AWC and the mission with which it was started at UMD. We request approval of this request

at your earliest convenience, and would be happy to answer any questions. Please contact

Nidhi Sethi, the AWC Event Coordinator, at sethinidhi@live.com.

Thank you.