Today feels a bit like the first day of elementary school. New Mary Janes, new dress, and the weird experience of having your mother remove a bit of dirt on your face with a smidge of saliva. Ick. I'm jittery, excited, nervous, and proud of my brand spanking new Quincy lunch box.
Today is the day we release our redesigned Microsoft Learning home page, our revamped and improved navigational structure, and (!!) the new Windows Server 2008 Portal. Will you like them? Will you find the home page less distracting and more useful? Will the navigational changes enable you to get where you want to go faster? Will the extensive restructuring of the Windows Server 2008 Portal help you get the training you need on this about-to-be-released product? Will you wonder why I've got a Quincy lunch box *and* why I'm ding dang excited about it? Will you even know who Quincy is? Oh, and will you wonder who are the two JLs and what is this blog about?
First and foremost, take a gander at the redesigned Microsoft Learning Home page. We've removed the clutter of text links, we simplified the design, and we created a space for rotating headlines and campaigns. We also made the three most popular activities on the site (Learning Plans, Find Training, and Find an Exam) into easy-to-access links directly on the home page. And we implemented Silverlight to deliver a richer, interactive online media experience – and it also makes the banners ads much snazzier. For the navigation, we took the results of card sorts and heuristic evaluations and applied what we learned. We organized like with like, and we simplified instead of complicated things. On the newly revamped Windows Server 2008 Portal, we completely changed how we approached and organized a learning portal. We structured the pages to align with the various phases of training and we created 18 new Learning Plans based on Windows Server adoption phases, key technologies, and career paths. We made the campaigns easier to find – because who doesn’t love a bargain!?
All of these changes are a result of usability studies, months of meetings in conference rooms with charts and graphics and white boards and strong opinions, and the shared effort of many smart and dedicated people with a passion for the Web and the user experience.
As for the authors of this blog, the two JLs, Julie and I (Josephine) are the marketing managers for the Microsoft Learning Web site. We have similar sounding first and last names, we both have long dark hair and glasses, we're both creative, and we both have cats. And we're lucky enough to work with a group of talented and brilliant people at Microsoft Learning and at Microsoft. The changes you see today aren't the result of one person, but many. We hope you like what we've done so far and we welcome your feedback -- positive or negative. Over the coming months, we'll continue to make more and more changes to the site. Reorganizing this, restructuring that, and reviewing content to ensure that we're giving you the information that you need in a location where you can find it.
If you haven't yet, take a moment to look around at this first batch of changes that we've made, then leave a comment and let us know what you think.
