School of Informatics nominated for Webby

The School of Informatics and Computing has been nominated for a Webby Award.

The school’s website was nominated in the School/University category, along with four other finalists. Sites from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Victoria (British Columbia) and the School of Visual Arts (New York). 

The Webby Awards are awarded by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet, with categories for online videos, comedies, advertising and other awards. The 15th annual Webby Awards features 68 categories and received more than 10,000 submissions, of which only 340 were selected to be nominees. Each category has a winner and a People’s Voice Award.

“This nomination is huge, and it is a reward for the effort that was put into this project,” said Ashley Callahan, a web developer for IU’s internal marketing and design firm, the Office of Creative Services.

The informatics school’s site was designed through a joint partnership with the school and creative services. Creative services won a Webby Award in 2007 for the website “10 Ways IU is Red Hot.”

“This was a collaborative project from the very beginning,” said Rebecca Salerno, director of creative services.

The school’s last website was created more than 10 years ago.

“We wanted a site that would represent what our school represents ... which is diversity, impactful and forward-thinking,” School of Informatics and Computing Director of Planning James Shea said.

The site was a project that Shea assigned to Salerno, who managed the team that built the site. The School hired creative services and started work on the new website in November 2008 and collected data until February 2009, Salerno said.

“We started with collecting data, a lot of data,” Salerno said. Stakeholder research included interviewing administrators, faculty members and professors within the school. Informatics students interviewed past, current and prospective users. They even created focus groups at the high school level.

Salerno took this data and quickly started work on the new website after their proposal was approved in April 2009. Heather Beery, who organizes all the information that appears on the website and determines what appears on the website, said one of the reasons why the site was so successful was that it was a collaborative project from the beginning.

“We took the research, and we all brainstormed how this site was going to work,” Beery said. “We needed this site to reflect their wants and meet their needs. After all, this site is representing a technology-based school.”

The official launch date for the website was July 2009. Calhoun said she is pleased with the website and has received great feedback both externally and internally.
“This website really stands out, and it is different from any of our competitors’ websites,” Salerno said. “Our website has cool features and up-to-date technologies that breaks away from the same-ness.”

The website tries to be interactive to prospective students and give them a taste of what it is like to be a part of this school, and it also features social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

The website boasts discovery and cloud features as well. It allows the site to exhibit large amounts of information, videos, activities and projects about the school.

“With these features, this information is manageable and allows the user to interact and experience instead of simply just navigating,” Shea said.

The school constantly strives to be technologically ahead, hip, different and forward-thinking, Shea said.

“Being nominated for a Webby is a distinguished honor and is an affirmation that we are on the right track,” Shea said, “especially when our competition includes MIT, Colorado and Victoria.”