UPDATING THE KB

All the Design STAs have been helping to update our older basic trainings to have more screenshots, instructions and tips related to new features on adobe software, headers, last steps, and overall have them more useful in helping to train new hires in basic skills that can be applied to the type of projects we work on here. Maddy, Bridget, and I worked on a lot of the overall organization and design of the knowledge base and made some updates. First thing was to take stock of what was on the KB and note what needed to be archived and what should stay. Maddy created a spreadsheet for this.

Then we made some changes to the categories sections to be smaller and have less specific sections. They are now more generalized for the type of work we do and on certain platforms. The archived content will disappear soon though as we have decided not to add that section to be visible on the front end of things.

The front page of the table of contents looks like this now! I made the banner and Bridget made the headers and tags for the sections. The black bar is one of the last things we are going to go in to and make further edits with since there is redundancy in there.

As for stylistic changes to the basic trainings, we now have headers and a cute image for final steps before closing off a training assignment. Sheryl made the following banner and I made the final steps image. This will now be standard for any new trainings that are made for the KB.

Cascade Updates

Created instructions based on this notice today. Now faculty and staff can edit profiles looking at instructions that are fitted to their permissions.

“….department staff can edit faculty profiles as well. We don’t have a help page that provides complete guidance from the staff perspective, but from the faculty list view they can reach the same edit view depicted in the documentation Suloni shared.”

Banner for KB Orientation

Here are some of my drafts for the banner where we will place links for orientation and basic trainings. I had to keep the same colors and look of the creature in our main banner for the KB. I made up the rest of the body and used hand lettering to keep it playful. We went with the third design because it had less separated elements.

 

Cascade and ChatBot Updates

While going through the KB for cascade documentation that needs to be removed or transferred we found one on course descriptions that was not on our site. I went ahead and added it to two different pages that deals with that content. One page has the instructions written out and the other has a link to that page at the bottom. Then I trained the chatbot for both of the pages.

Linguistics Research Center

Project: Creating a logo for the Linguistics Research Center 60 year anniversary
Client /Prof: Prof. Hans Boas
Completion status: Started May 19, 2020
Staff guidance: Suloni Robertson
STA team members: Maddy Kaniewski
Description/plans: Creating a new logo for LRC that is in style with their homepage and the image they provided.
To be completed: June 15th, 2020

The first two images were created using the official UT wordmark and pulling colors from their site homepage banner. Although we found out there was some miscommunication and that they wanted something different. So the next set of logos is based on an image Prof. Boas provided. For the updated logo I kept using the UT serif font and made them in illustrator. I don’t use illustrator a lot so I had to learn quickly how to edit parts of the text to get the outlined effect similar to the image that was given to us. It was pretty easy to figure out though. Although the first draft was a ‘failure’ I think the new ones look really formal and concise and I also learned how to do something new. All in all, I think it was a good project. Once he lets me know which option he likes I’m going to fix them up just ever so slightly and send it off.

Old Logo Denied:

Image Provided from Client:

New Logo Based off of Feedback:

 

 

Taking Stock of what is on the KB

Maddy has put together this spreadsheet for us to go through and identify all the content that is on our knowledge base. We are going to be re-editing and updating a lot of this content to be more efficient, clear, and useful for new hires that are going to be coming in. All the content in red is out-dated and not applicable, everything in green is good to stay, and all the stuff in orange we need clarification on its usefulness or maybe needs more updating to turn into green. Everything in yellow is a basic training which is what Suloni would like the main point of the KB to be. To train people on how to do things. Currently, I am waiting to talk with Maddy and possibly Bridget on what the next steps of this will look like.