What the new ChinaVine site might look like.
In a lowly lit room, a group of ten deliberate over a long walnut-colored table. Kirsten Hierholzer directs the conversation. A project she has labored over for the last nine months is now coming to fruition. With the basic structure, wire-frames, and a good deal of content migrated from the old site, all that remains is for the ChinaVine team to choose between three designs for their new website.
Hierholzer runs a team of four students and three full-time employees, including Dave McCallum, Mark Hazen, Azle Malinao-Alvarez, at the University of Oregon’s Interactive Media Group (IMG). She and her team have been busy designing ChinaVine’s new website since March of 2010. The site will include a large number of new features which were not available when the first site was developed in 2006. These include, social media integration, blogging, a user registry, and a geo-tag enabled map.
ChinaVine’s new site is one of six projects Hierholzer and IMG are currently working on. “ChinaVine is definitely one of the more complex projects in terms of the content organization,” says Hierholzer, adding “it’s always a little more challenging when you are redesigning a site. Because the content was written for another site.”
Kirsten Hierholzer and Doug Blandy discuss designs for the new CV site.
While the new website takes a lot of its design from the earlier site, the bulk of ChinaVine’s voluminous field data has been reorganized to aid and expand user searches. The new site will give users a greater ability to pin-point their searches with expanded fields including, artists, type of art, as well as location.
The user registry is another advance to the new site. The registry will allow CV participants from the general public and as well as from the scholarly community to both blog and add their scholarly material.
Another welcome addition is the integration of social media like Vimeo and Flickr. Unlike the old site, where media files were stored on the University of Central Florida’s servers, the new site will host its media files via social media sites. This means, for instance, when you watch a video, Vimeo will do the actual hosting. Having large files reside inside the social media cloud, allows the new site to avoid the heavy-lifting required with these files. It also gives ChinaVine more opportunities to reach out to like-minded individuals in the cloud.
The iconic Flash-enabled map of China that launched with the old site now has its own page with greater interactivity allowing content to be geo-tagged. This feature, the province of IMG new hire, Mark Hazen will not be part of the site’s initial unrolling. But stayed tuned, IMG assures ChinaVine, it’s coming soon.
On a screen at the end of the table the final three designs are being picked by the UO ChinaVine team. The chosen design, created by IMG member Azle Malinao-Alvarez, keeps a color scheme similar to the group’s existing CV website with a sharp red CV icon silhouetted against a soft parchment-like background.
After choosing the final design UO team leader, Doug Blandy, addresses Kirsten and her IMG team. “I just want to say how very appreciative I am,” says an impressed Blandy. “Your team has obviously worked very hard on this.”
Reflecting on her time spent on the project, Hierholzer says she found the CV team great to work with, adding that the site has proven to be a challenge. But Hierholzer says that’s a good thing. “That’s what I like about this job. There is always something new coming through the door.”
When will the site be rolled out? Hierholzer starts testing the site with potential users next week? Expect the new site in the next six months.
Keep in touch CV Updates followers. This blog as well as a new user generated blog will migrate to the new site!