Background: Creating a site to provide support materials to Educator's

After completing the initial phase of the project that I was hired to do for Premier, they asked me to create a new site for them to support a new product for K-12 Educators. This site was built on the same technologies as the other sites(Liferay, Oracle UCM database, Velocity, HTML, jQuery and css), but this time we created everything from the design to the server-side code.

With the content strategy already in place from our previous work, I went to work creating a new look and feel for this site to match that of the product as well as adding a couple of much needed UX and UI improvements. Premier asked that the design of the site remain similar to the other existing sites.

Background: Programming

Premier at first intended for educators and student's to login and use a series of features such as a forum, poll, and a custom support area. After analyzing the resources to manage these features, they removed these features. They also wanted to protect the content from competitors and student's

We created a login that required the user to enter a single "Product Code" to get instant access to the resources on the site.

Background: Site planning, design and development

This neuroscience, research-based program strives to improve students' academic performance by encouraging the development of executive functions—the ability to plan, strategically solve problems, self-regulate behavior, make decisions, pay attention, monitor and evaluate performance, and manage time. We were responsible for creating:

• Information planning and architecture
• Wireframes and pixel mockups
• UI/UX Design
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• Velocity Views
• Portlet Administration and Configuration
• Oracle UCM queries and content uploads

Background: Site planning, design and development

The Skinny On: College Success is planner product geared toward student's who are preparing for the college environemnt. This site's primary purpose was to provide additional materials for educators who were using this product in their classrooms. We were responsible for creating:

• Information planning and architecture
• Wireframes and overall design
• UI Design
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• Velocity Views
• Portlet Administration and Configuration
• Oracle UCM queries and content uploads

Background: Site planning, design and development

Be Healthy To Learn planner was developed by kidshealth.org and shows kids how to integrate healthy choices into their lives at both home and school. This site's primary purpose was to provide additional materials for educators who were using this product in their classrooms and included pdf, video and other resources.

We were responsible for creating:

• Information planning and architecture
• Wireframes and overall design
• UI Design
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• Velocity Views
• Portlet Administration and Configuration
• Oracle UCM queries and content uploads

Background: Site planning, design and development

The focus of Connections is preparing and supporting students for academic and life choices necessary to succeed in college. This site's primary purpose was to provide additional materials for educators who were using this product in their classrooms and included pdf, video, images and other resources.

We were responsible for creating:

• Information planning and architecture
• Wireframes and overall design
• UI Design
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• Velocity Views
• Portlet Administration and Configuration
• Oracle UCM queries and content uploads

Background: Site planning, design and development

Building Leaders is a high school planner that focuses on empowering students to become leaders in their communitiesa and school. This site's primary purpose was to provide additional materials for educators who were using this product in their classrooms and included pdf, video, images and other resources.

We were responsible for creating:

• Information planning and architecture
• Wireframes and overall design
• UI Design
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• Velocity Views
• Portlet Administration and Configuration
• Oracle UCM queries and content uploads

Background: Site planning, design and development

InCommand is an Elementary and Middle School curriculum that is based on research methods to help student's boost performance. This site was the primary online presence for this product and provdes teachers and educators with additional activities and resources, including interactive quizzes for students, videos, pdf worksheets and more.

We were responsible for creating:

• Interactive activities and quizzes for student's'
• Information planning and architecture
• Wireframes and pixel mockups
• UI/UX Design
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• Velocity Views
• Adaptive Modifications for Mobile and Tablet
• Portlet Administration and Configuration
• Oracle UCM queries and content uploads

Background: Site planning, design and development

The Raising Respect planner program provides actionable tips to identify, intervene, and address bullying in and out of school. This site was the primary online presence for this product and provdes teachers and educators with additional activities and resources, including interactive quizzes for students, videos, pdf worksheets and more.

We were responsible for creating:

• Interactive activities and quizzes for student's'
• Information planning and architecture
• Wireframes and overall design
• UI Design
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• Velocity Views
• Portlet Administration and Configuration
• Oracle UCM queries and content uploads

What We Are Proud Of: Everything See Below

• Jumping into a project without documentation and creating an implementation strategy
• Learning the many proprietary technologies needed to complete the project while delivering results in a timely manner.
  • Oracle Universal Content Management System
  • Liferay Portal Environment and Deployment
  • JSR 268 Portlet Technology
  • Apache Maven and the project object model (pom file)
  • Working in a completely new (corporate mandated) development environment
  • Working within the corporate development and technical standards
• Helping the client understand the possibility of the existing technology

What We Wish We Could Do: More User Experience Research and Improvements

Background: Planning & Content

School Specialty asked me to help them bring a series of sites that were unfinished live. They weren't sure as to the status of the sites as they were created by another firm. After some analysis, I determined much of the structure and skin for the sites was already created, but Premier needed help designing how to structure the content in order to fit within these pre-built structures. Premier didn't want to scrap what was already created, so they wanted us to help modify the structure of the sites in order to fit their business needs. We designed the structure of how the content would be presented to the user, the login system, and then of course we assisted in the implementation of uploading the content to the Oracle Universal Content Management Database.

This project included more than 24 separate sites. All the sites were hosted on the companies corporate servers in Wisconsin. As I mentioned above, the content was stored in Oracle UCM, the site was run on Java in the Liferay Portal. All code was checked in and out of SVN and all work was completed in a virtualized development environment using eclipse and packaged into deployable WAR files using Apache Maven. The code and content had to be migrated between a series of test servers before going live.

Background: Programming

Premier at first intended for educators and student's to login and use a series of features such as a forum, poll, and a custom support area. After analyzing the resources to manage these features, they decided to remove some of of this functionality. The core of the sites is a download area where Educator's login and download content if they have the appropriate permissions for that content.

We created a login system that only required a single "Product Code" that the educator could fill in and get instant access to the resources on the site. This required customizing the login portlet within liferay using JQuery, css and Velocity (a Java language for creating views).