Lafayette College launched its redesigned web site on Sunday at www.lafayette.edu. Viget worked with the Easton, PA-based liberal arts college for the past six months to redesign the main Lafayette.edu web site.
We went into the project with several key business goals in mind. We knew that we needed to provide the College with a fresh professional design that would resonate with their core audiences. At the same time, it was important to provide an improved user experience targeted to the needs and interests of the site's users. To accomplish this, we set out to build a site that would:
- build the Lafayette brand to enhance its reputation as a dynamic, intellectually challenging, undergraduate liberal arts institution
- support users by making relevant, engaging content easy to find online.
Our process began with a full content audit and content inventory, a site map, and wireframes to really dig into the information architecture and user experience requirements of the redesign. On the visual side, we approached the rebrand with three distinct mood boards and several rounds of design comps before arriving at the finished product. (Get a behind the scenes look at the design process on our Inspire blog.)
Continue reading "Lafayette College Redesign"
In the past year we celebrated 10 years since we first opened our doors in DC, and 3 years since we opened our first remote doors in Durham, NC. The Durham experiment, AKA "Viget South," exceeded our expectations. We learned a lot about the benefits and pains associated with having two offices, and on the whole it's been great for us as a business and as individuals. If two is good, then three must be better -- especially if "three" is in Boulder, Colorado.
I lived in Boulder when we incorporated Viget back in 1999 (when the above photo was taken), but quickly moved back "home" to DC to get the business going. Ever since, it's been a bit of a company tradition to ask when we'll be opening an office there. We considered it back in 2007, but ultimately decided that Durham was a better location for our first remote office.
Continue reading "Go West, Viget. To Boulder, Colorado."
Do you have what it takes to be a Project Manager?
There was a time when I asked myself that very question. Just a few years ago (as I explained to the Viget crew in my internal, company-wide LabShare presentation last week), I decided to change careers from a television marketing producer to ... Something else. I just wasn't quite sure what yet.
When a job listing for a web project management position first crossed my path, it sounded like a great idea. I was, after all, a TV "project manager" of sorts, and I wanted to work with the web.
Yet, I hesitated. "What exactly does a Project Manager do? Am I qualified for this?" I asked.
Well, the truth is that I'm not alone in asking these questions. Nowadays, when I tell people my job title, they often have no idea what it entails. "Project management" is such a vague term that it's easily misinterpreted or simply not understood.
So, what does a PM do? And, now that I'm an experienced project manager, what insight can I give you into the skills required to be a top-notch PM? Here is my very simple, very informal questionnaire to evaluate whether you have what it takes:
Continue reading "So You Think You Can Project Manage?"
Duke Divinity School launched its redesigned web site on Monday at http://divinity.duke.edu. Viget worked with the Divinity School and Duke Web Services to redefine the site's information architecture, user experience design, and visual design. Here's what the site looked like before the redesign:
The Divinity School wanted to refresh the site's look and feel while incorporating richer media content into the redesigned site, including more vivid photography and more video.
Our user experience team got started by collaborating with multiple stakeholders to organize existing pages and site sections into a site map. Once we identified some key page templates, we laid out the home page and several interior pages as wireframes. An excerpt from the home page wireframe is shown below.
Continue reading "A Divine Redesign"
Last month marked the end of the second quarter, and per tradition we held our State of the Labs meeting and celebrated with a Viget team event. When planning an event for 40+ people, it's difficult to find activities that everyone will enjoy, but this Third Third Thursday (TTT) event proved that it’s not impossible. Both the Falls Church and Durham offices participated in some type of cooking event.
Continue reading "Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen"
Three years ago this week we opened Viget's first remote office in Durham, NC. I am proud to say that what started out as a bit of an experiment has become a big success. We've been able to grow our Durham staff from 3 to 14 (close to capacity at our second office!).
We've worked with great local clients including Duke, NC Gives, the NC chapter of Easter Seals, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC, and Spoonflower, in addition to all the non-local projects to which we've contributed. We've facilitated Refresh the Triangle for about two and a half years, which has been a terrific way to connect with other designers and developers in the area. As individuals, we've bought houses, had kids, acquired pets, written books, and had a lot of fun.
On a personal note, I joined Viget in March of 2007 with the responsibility of getting the Durham office off the ground. After doing everything from yard work to recruiting (and losing a lot of ping pong games in between), I feel like I can finally say, "I did it!" Of course, I couldn't have done it without Viget HQ, Ben and Peyton (who moved down from Virginia to help get things going), all of the current staff, and this supportive community. It's nice to take a few minutes to eat cake, celebrate the milestone, and dream about what the next three years might bring!
We at Viget Labs are pleased and proud that Duke.edu earned a Bronze Award in the Complete Institutional Web Site category of the 2010 CASE Circle of Excellence awards.
Viget worked last fall with Duke University's Office of News and Communications to design the home page and secondary Spotlight pages for the university's web site.
CASE (The Council for Advancement and Support of Education) received 54 entries in this category and awarded one gold, one silver, and two bronze prizes. The Circle of Excellence awards program acknowledges great achievements by institutions of higher education.
One of the judges, Michael Stoner, described on his blog how the entries were evaluated. Among the criteria on which the sites were judged were the following elements:
- sound information architecture, navigability, usability and search
- a clear identity that is appropriate to the organization
- an appropriate level of innovation (Designers pushed the envelope without diminishing the findability or readability of content.)
- standardization of interface across the site
We kept all these elements and more in mind as we worked with the Duke team to redesign Duke.edu, especially the standardization of interface across the site, which we took one step further with the brand bar concept we developed to extend that standardization to other sites under the Duke University umbrella.
Congratulations to everyone involved in the strategy, design, development, and content creation for Duke.edu. We're honored to be able to share this accomplishment with such a deserving group of people.
Last night at Refresh the Triangle, my co-worker and friend David Eisinger gave a revised version of a talk he gave at DevNation in Chicago a while back. He wrote an overview of the talk on our developer blog recently; it's a great topic. David spent one hour each day for 30 days learning a new technology. He kept a blog about it and did some hard thinking, not just about programming languages, but also motivation, determination, and success. He shared his thoughts last night and was kind enough to add a "NERD ALERT" badge to his slides when he transitioned from general wisdom to programming details.
David is hilarious and insightful, and even though I may have been the least technical person in the room, I loved the presentation. He left developers talking about the specific technologies he experimented with; he left designers talking about what they might tackle -- like 30 days of new fonts; and he left me talking about the general challenges of changing habits and trying out new things.
If you're in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area and do anything related to the web, I encourage you to come out to the Refresh meetings. We meet on the fourth Thursday of each month. It doesn't matter what your particular expertise is. We do our best to find speakers and topics that raise new questions, reveal new ideas, inspire better work, and build stronger relationships. Last night was Refresh at its finest -- complete with beers and hilarity after the meeting.
(P.S. - We had the privilege of having our meeting in Rigsbee Hall last night. It's a beautiful, historic, accessible space in downtown Durham with awesome AV equipment. Whether you're planning a wedding or a professional conference, it's a sweet place to gather.)
Think back to your school days, when you were tasked with writing the longest research paper of your life. Chances are, you pulled an all-nighter before the deadline and miraculously cranked out an acceptable essay (double-spaced, of course). Looking back, do you think this was your finest work? Would you want the rest of the world to look at this hastily thrown-together effort as the ultimate representation of your abilities?
No, I didn't think so.
It surprises me how often companies take this "all-nighter" approach for their websites. They want their new site to do X, Y, and Z ... and they want it NOW. A website, like a research paper, isn't something that should be pieced together as quickly as possible without proper preparation. A research paper without research is often a disorganized jumble with no coherent vision or purpose; a website without strategy will reach the same fate.
This is where the 7 P's come in.
Continue reading "The 7 P’s of Web Projects … And 7 Reasons Why They Work"
Our work on Ficly was recognized as a Silver Medalist at the 61st Annual Show hosted by the Art Director's Club of Metropolitan Washington. We were honored to be among dozens of other amazing agencies in the Washington, DC area. The complete list of winning Viget entries includes:
