Special Interest Groups, all aboard

The "Research" section of the new PN website will feature prominently "special interest groups" to highlight dynamic, cross-cutting faculty research interests. A call for (self-)nominaiton of the groups were sent out in the summer, and an internal mock up site has been set up for people to experiment with ideas.

Here's where the groups stand: we have at least 7 groups covering wide range of topics. In the order they were LAST updated, here are groups that have put together information on the mock up site:

• dukepn.googlepages.com/languageliteracyandcognitivedevelopment
• dukepn.googlepages.com/pop
• dukepn.googlepages.com/mod
• dukepn.googlepages.com/tals
• dukepn.googlepages.com/socialandpersonalityprocesses2
• dukepn.googlepages.com/mad
• dukepn.googlepages.com/pahd

In addition, a number of ideas have been floating around but have so far not been put down on the drawing board. Now it's time to update information or to pen down these ideas on the mock up site.

There will never be a "Now or Never" point -- the whole idea of the sigs is that they will be fluid and dynamic. However, in a month or so time when the new site is finalized, decisions have to be made for each group to go public or not. The decision -- which should be made by members of that particular group -- depends on how much of the content is there on the mock up site. So let's just say this is a REALLY good time to catch the early train.

The logon to edit the mock up pages was emailed in the summer, but if you need it sent again, just drop me a line (mailto:gary.feng@duke.edu).

PS: don't like the name "special interest groups"? Tell us how you would like to call it by posting your comment at the end of the post, or email me.

Web Design, round 3

Blackwell Interactive, formerly WeST Group, provides a preview of the latest design. In addition to the front page, it also details the 2nd-level page. Below are thumbnail pictures of the design. The original fullsize design can be found at http://trinity.aas.duke.edu/~bap13/psych/index.html.

The preview uses stock images, which will be replaced with relevant images from our faculty, the department, and perhaps the Duke news service.

Please post your comment here or email me (mailto:gary.feng@duke.edu).

The font page.



The 2nd-order page; an example when you click on the "Undergraduate" navigation link.
A sub-menu will slide down and reveal links to relevant undergraduate information. Other "first-order" links will be pushed down by the new sub-menu, but will remain available and functional.

Web design, round 2

After the last meeting, Barbara Puccio at WeST has reworded the graphic design based on the feedback we provided. Here are some of the snapshots. You can find these and past designs here from WeST's site.

The next image illustrates the rotating images on the top left. The images will be provided by faculty.

This variation shows a different central image. We will feature rotating faculty and/or research profiles on the front page. This one also moves the "by audience" link to the upper right corner, as a drop down menu, which is a design option.

Please post your comments below, where you see the "pen" icon.

Meeting minute: June 27 with the WeST group

I met with Blyth, Barbara, and Ben in the morning of June 27. The meeting was delayed for about 3 weeks due to scheduling conflicts. We had a number of issues to resolve.

1. Possible delay of the launch date.
Blyth warned in an email prior to the meeting that the site is unlikely to completed by the original August deadline; it's more likely to be early October.

A number of factors contributed to the possibly delay. On the WeST group side, they are (as we speak) in the process of moving from East Campus to West, which will delay work for a number of weeks. On the PN side, we were not able to settle on major design issues around Graduate Training and Research before Summer began.

We discussed a number of options to try to recover the lost time. We agree that the #1 priority is to get the static contents up, particularly Graduate and Undergraduate sections. To this end, Ben will be working with the DGS and DUS in the structural design of these sections. Enhancements such as a dynamic event calendar may not be functional initially.

Another difficult discussion was Research, which at the time I had not a single "group" to showcase to the WeST team. We have a whole bunch now, thanking to everyone who responded to the request.

Fortunately, we are in agreement with the first-order structure of the site (main headers such as Graduate, Undergraduate, People, Research, etc.). WeST can start revise the graphical design. Also most textual information is either on our existing site or in the FDS. WeST is experienced in handling these sources.

2. Graphical Design
I shared with the WeST team feedbacks from the Web Committee about their first mock ups (see previous post on this). Barbara is the graphic designer, and she will be working on a revised design, based on a 2-column design (see Sample 2), with more prominent Dept title, a rotating "reseach profile" on the center stage, and additional (rotating) images at the upper-left corner.

We will be requesting research-related images from the faculty.

3. Event calendar, and additional features
One of the design goals of the web site is to reduce email announcements by providing a central place for departmental (and group) events. To this end Blyth suggests using dCal or other University-wide calendar systems. The advantages are obvious. What's not clear at this point is whether dCal can email individuals who "sign-up" for a particular event. Alternatively, Josh is working on a groupware program "Plone" which does have this and other desirable functionalities. We will have to come back to this.

4. A revised timeline
It's still sketchy now, in part because of the impending move of the design team. We set July 18 for revision of the graphic design. Static textual contents should also be compiled before then.

5. Action items

1. DGS and DUS's: materials to Ben
2. Research group info: forward our own mock up site to WeST.
3. Calendar: involve Josh in the discussion with WeST
4. Research images: ask faculty

MoD, PoP, the groups are forming

The 2nd call for group nomination went out a week before July 4th, and I've so far got quite a handful of acronyms to play with. Just updated the Research section of our internal mock up site (http://dukepn.googlepages.com/). The groups are not ordered in any particular way. And you will be able to add/revise information on the group pages (watch your email inbox).

Groups with detailed info (click out the Group Homepages):

Principles of Perception (PoP)

Psychosocial Aspects of Health Disparities (PAHD)

Teaching and Learning Sciences (TALS)

Placeholders (no group homepages)

Mechanisms of Development (MOD)

Behavioral and Computational Neuroscience (BCN)

Still brewing

(Social Relations, Social Competency, and Development)

(Social Psychology Group)

(Cross-cultural Language and Literacy Development)

Please email me (garyfeng@duke.edu) as soon as you can any additional nomination. Placeholders are fine, but fill in as much (temporary) information as you can will make the job that much easier. We will pass the info to the web developer group by July 9th.

Template for P&N Research Groups/Networks

A month ago at our last faculty meeting of the Spring semester, Patricia suggested a new way to present faculty research interests on the new website -- by research interest groups or networks. Compared to a list of interests of individual faculty, the advantages are:

1. It reflects the dynamic, interdisciplinary collaborations among our faculty and with other units on campus.
2. It attracts prospective graduate students
   

There are, of course, a lot of details to be fleshed out before this can be implemented in HTML. One critical question is how to direct interested students to an "Apply Here" page. While there is a lot of appeal in the idea that students can apply to "join the group", so to speak, upon further discussion with the Chairs and the DGS's it looks like the best approach at this time is to link them to the "Graduate Studies" page, where they can find general information about the P&N and specific requirements for each program or groups that admits students.

So back to the "Research" page, Patricia suggested that we take a two step process in making the groups.

1. Nomination of the groups/networks. Faculty, as individuals or as groups, can nominate research interest groups that reflects their current research directions. See the template below. Information about each group will be temporarily posted on our internal mock up website, until the new site is up.
   
2. Self-nomination, or joining the group. As the groups are establishing themselves, individual faculty will self-nominate to any groups that they wish to join, as many or few as they wish.
   

To get started with the first step, please fill in the following template and email me (gary.feng@duke.edu) at your earliest convenience, before July 1. Please note that the information can be changed later. At this point of the process it's more important to know how many groups we are anticipating and what they might be. For a mock up of what a group page might look like (just an idea), see http://dukepn.googlepages.com/researchgroup1

===== Template for P&N Research Groups/Networks =====

** Please note:
** 1. information should be in plain text; any formating will
** not be preserved. Please send images as attachments.
** 2. email the info to garyfeng@duke.edu

Name:
descriptive, better be less than 5 words

Preferred acronym:

Logo/icon:
a thumbnail image that will be used as a graphical id of the group.

Very Brief Description:
30 words max, for displaying on the front page.

Description:
~200-word description of the group, with or without subsections.

Image(s):
your favorite images of studies, results, group pictures, etc.

Members:
please list separately: faculty (from PN), affiliated members (from other campus units), post docs, visiting/research personnels, and graduate students

*note: this will include the initial members. Anybody can join any group after the group is established.

Links:
Links to members' FDS pages will be automatically created. Please include additional links to lab pages, facilities, and other resources.

May 15 meeting minutes

The committee met at 11-12 today. I am really pleased that the site begins to take shape, at least structurally. A number of things to report:

1. Gary will email everyone about the blog (which you are reading), the mock-up site, etc., so that people can swing to work on these sites. The idea is that each office (e.g., DGS) will revise the section on the internal mock-up site.
   
   What to do on the mock-up site:
   
   • Revise/edit existing page(s): Once logged on, you can select a page and edit like in Word. You can paste in information, too. When you are done, click on "publish". It automatically saves all the changes.
   • Create new pages. On an existing page, select some words (which will be the name of the link), click the "link" button on the righthand tools area, and follow from there. It creates a link to a new page. Then, follow the "Back to .." link to the left of the "Publish" button, scroll down to find the page you just created -- it's blank, of course. You can start edit now.
   • Comment: there is not a comment tool, but you can simply type your comment, select the text, and change it to a bright color.
     
     
2. WRT WeST's graphical mock ups, the committee generally likes the 2-column design (sample 2), but with specific requests and suggestions. The front page should have:
   
   • Contact info clearly presented
   • Mission Statement, but short
   • A rotating profile of faculty, labs, research groups (and graduate students?)
     
   • Search box, a must
     
   
   In addition,
   
   • the current design lacks "depth" and is flat. Which is to be expected for a quick mock up, but hopefully the final version will be much more visually appealing.
   • the announcement should be visually distinct from the mission statement and other elements.
   • there was discussion about where to put Job Announcements. The should be featured in both "Events & Announcements" and the "For ..." section on the front page.
     
3. The committee spent most of the time on how to represent Graduate Studies and Research Areas. The message from both DGS's is clear -- applicants need to indicate which program (tracks, or whatever the name will be) they are applying to. Their applications will be reviewed by faculty in that program.
   
   One of the highest priorities in the Graduate section of the website is to reduce the confusion of applicants -- and the number of inquires to our staff members. This entails that, as a design principle, we should always bring prospective applicants back to "Graduate Studies" page. In other words, there is only a single entry for graduate application, where the DGS has control of information flow.
   
   I changed the mock up site so that wherever we have "How to Apply" links, they bring the applicant to the "Graduate Studies" page, rather pages of than individual "programs".
   
   
4. Research Areas: there were questions about the differences between Graduate Programs and Research Groups, but time didn't permit further discussion. Looks like we don't need much change here, except the "How to Apply" links.
   
   
5. About the Department: a few things need work here
   
   • Mission statement is too long
   • Quick Facts -- vital stats on # of faculty, grads, majors, and many more possibilities.
   • Brief History -- who writes this?
   
   
6. Time line: You should have seen the timeline on the righthand side of this blog. The committee thinks it's reasonable. We will see if this will work with WeST.
   
   
7. Where to go from here:
   
   • Gary will meet with Blyth on Friday to communicate the structure of the site and the feedback on their mock-ups.
   • Requests to faculty: Photos, and Bios
   • Feedback: via email and blog. Sometime in June/July WeST will present several designs for feedback.
     

A couple of older docs

For keeping track of developmental documents, we use the Google Doc site for sharing Word and Excel documents. Documents can be secure/private, shared, or public, which may be quite useful.

• Template for Research Groups, which I eventually copied to this mock up site.
• Membership roster, a spreadsheet to keep track of who is in which group, for the future.

Further more, the Google Picasa Web is an online photo album where we can host photos of lab images, dept events, etc. For now it's (the album associated with this account) is set as public but it can certainly be "unlisted". Here's a picture served from the above site:

Feedback

To let us know your thoughts about the design, the process, or just about anything else, do one of the two things:

1. talk (email, call) Gary, Ian, and/or members of the committee. There is a reason the old fashioned way works for thousands of years.
2. Or, leave your thoughts -- anonymously if you prefer -- at this site. It's easy. There is a "post a comment" link at the bottom of every blog entry. Click and start typing away. The comments are moderated; they will appear as soon as someone reviews it. Someone will.
   

Photos, photos

Everybody needs a face-lift. We are working with Duke Phtography to get new portrays for our faculty. Duke Photo has an internal web-based album to for all the pictures they've taken for this project. So far we have faces of 19 faculty there.

• If you have already had the picture taken, log on here to view your pictures. Follow the instructions in the email you received from Tommy at Duke Photo
• If you haven't had a chance to get the mug shot, please contact Tommy at 684-4391 and schedule a meeting.

Thank you all!

Welcome to the mock up world

The Web Committee will be meeting today for the 5th time, if I am counting right. The goal is ambitious -- to try to settle down on a structural recommendation to the web developer, the WeST Group at Arts and Sciences, soon to be part of the OIT.

Here are a couple of things that will be the basis for today's discussion.

For a working "wireframe" model (i.e., the structure, not the presentation), see

http://dukepn.googlepages.com/home

For WeST group's first mock-ups, see here