June 3, 2024
Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,
Since we launched the Digital Transformation project in March, Deloitte and DePaul have managed a successful “discovery” phase of the
Designing DePaul Digital Transformation project. This discovery phase was designed and planned to help us learn about our community’s current needs and aspirations for how DePaul shows up in digital spaces. This phase included candid conversations about digital experiences with members inside and outside of the DePaul community as well as an assessment of the most valuable aspects of our current website. We wanted to share an update on our activities over the last two months and what comes next.
Robust Governance
Faculty and staff from across departments and disciplines are involved at every level of this project, from high-level guidance to technical expertise to daily tasks. You can view a list of all the DePaul community members who are involved
here. These governance groups meet regularly, and everyone involved organizes their work and collaborates across teams to keep the project on track.
Webpage Inventory
To date, the Deloitte team has taken inventory of more than 56,000 webpages on DePaul.edu. Upcoming work will focus on prioritizing pages and determining where to focus redesign efforts to lead to the best final product possible.
Community Engagement
Interviews and Focus Groups
- As of May 21, Deloitte has engaged with more than 550 people across faculty, staff, students, and prospective students and their families to share their thoughts on how DePaul’s digital presence could be more effective, how they access information, and how communication across the university community happens. These insights have helped us better understand what people value and how they connect – key elements to the effective and engaging digital experiences we aim to provide.
Digital Transformation Summits
- All community members were invited to provide insight and feedback during four Digital Transformation Summits designed to engage people in activities and discussions to learn more about what they find important in their digital experiences.
- Between April 8 and 19, 173 DePaul community members took part in these summits, where they participated in discussions and activities to start describing their aspirations and visions for the digital transformation.
Prioritization Workshops
- During the week of May 6, Deloitte conducted workshops to have DePaul community members evaluate different types of content and explore how to optimize the user experience.
- The information shared during these workshops provided Deloitte’s design team with direction to begin framing ideas for what DePaul’s web presence and internal portal experiences could be.
Content Audit
- The Deloitte team identified hundreds of webpages on DePaul.edu that had outdated content, were rarely accessed, or were poorly placed or constructed.
- In a closely guided process, DePaul community members reviewed this list to classify which pages had critical info and which could be preliminarily relocated to less central spots – with the intent of building a cleaner user experience on our external-facing website.
Office Hours
- Office hours are one more way that community members can engage, ask questions, and make their voice part of our success. We have hosted eleven of these sessions and after a summer break we will restart office hours in the fall.
Website Design Survey
This survey is always “on” and provides the opportunity to explore how this project affects you and how you are – or would like to be – involved. Please
complete the survey today and invite others to do so!
Next Steps
This week, we move from the discovery phase into the “define” phase. We will use what we have learned so far to draft the roadmaps necessary to guide the design and development of the public-facing website and internal portal.
This next step includes using everything learned about the DePaul community to refine “user stories” that represent who we serve and build webpage experiences around them. Further, we will begin the process of implementing the content management system (CMS) that will power the website and internal portal to make these tailored user experiences possible. The define phase will kick off in June and continue through early 2025.
We will keep the DePaul community updated and engaged throughout the project! We appreciate your active involvement and eagerly anticipate the exciting developments ahead.
Sincerely,
The Digital Transformation Steering Committee
Salma Ghanem
Rob Manuel
Sherri Sidler
Arbin Smith
Giana Aguilar-Valencia
GianMario Besana
Elizabeth Clements
Christopher Drupieski
Katie Fraumann
Soumitra Ghosh
Margaret Heller
Sasha Ivanic
Bob McCormick
Lexa Murphy
DeWayne Peevy
Liz Sanders
Cristel Turner