Op-Ed: BLSConnect, The Metamorphosis
It’s campaign season, the time of year for personal reinvention.
On Monday morning, 6:56 a.m. EST, the IT Team announced the launch of a remodeled BLSConnect. As is often the case with such declarations, the tone of the missive flitted between modesty and self-approval. The IT Team, after all, was eager to demonstrate its mettle, especially after months of dickey servers and log-in problems.
In the e-mail, fancy tech features were trotted out like show dogs. The new Connect would boast “improved search and navigation functionality.” There would be more links, an innovative calendar. And because the revamped interface was modeled according to student “feedback,” a refined navigational dashboard would now guide meandering users compass-like where its predecessor had merely spun about.
But, alas, the inaugural ticker tape was deployed too early. When students awoke from their fitful dreams, they found the good old BLSConnect “welcome screen” transformed into a hideous error message. User names and passwords were rendered useless. Pretty soon the IT Team had sent out another e-mail, this one an apology. Apparently, it conceded, people were experiencing “log-in problems.” Many people.
How well does this auger for the new BLSConnect? Surely in its race to win over the student body, the IT Team had wished to start anew, to put behind them not only the widely reviled original Connect, but the persistent sentiment around campus that the Team itself couldn’t handle user demand. Premiering the new system simply to have it crash, like a maiden cruise liner listing toward the jetty, could only undermine the IT Department’s credibility.
Yet politics, whether national or campus-wide, are all about comebacks. By Tuesday, the Team had sent out another e-mail. They had seemingly corrected the problem, whatever it had been. Students could now log in and explore the new Connect. Gone were the clunky interface, the crowded menu bar, the dizzyingly unintuitive navigation options. Missing, too, was the Public Interest tab, apparently a relic from a more compassionate time. In their place, users found softer edges, sharper connections. And like a luminous Arkansas presidential nominee having weathered a scandal, the Connect site emerged reborn.
Inaugurations are odd. They’re celebrations of the untested. The newly elected politician is met with jubilation and good cheer, despite having pronounced nothing but promises. So too the announcement of a new tech product; it’s only a vague assurance of improved performance. The real test begins once the ticker tape is swept from the public square.
Maybe it’s simply my American affection for the underdog, but the IT Team, one of BLS’s most recognized and publicly discussed departments, has all the makings of a great politician. They disappoint, they fail, they flounder. Sometimes we wish them ill. But they always apologize, dust themselves off, and try to win us back.
I could not disagree more. The BLSConnect relaunch has no silver lining.
The promised search improvements are simply lacking. It is the same old infrastructure with a new coat of paint. You would think the budget adjustment form would come up under a search for “budget adjustment”. But no.
When I was finally able to log in on Tuesday, I also discovered that the pages for Public Service, and indeed the entire “Intellectual Life” section, were missing altogether. They have since been restored, but only after complaints were lodged.
The larger text is great for eyes sore from reading casebooks, but combined with the narrower layout, it means less info visible at once–fewer events, fewer meetings, more clicks, and fewer impressions for on-campus groups jockeying for space to publicize their events. I agree that there should not be too much noise, but at least show a few in the default view! Two clicks later, when you finally arrive in calendar view (which by the way is much better than the previous endless list), it’s in a popup, and printed in tiny text. Leaving the default title on the page makes it hard to find in my forest of open Westlaw tabs. What’s a Trumba, anyway? The calendar import is much-needed, but for some reason it double-adds events to Apple iCal.
Layout and navigation are confusingly similar to the main brooklaw site. At the same time, it’s strikingly different from the old BLSConnect, meaning we all have to learn new tricks. There’s a way to improve site nav without changing everything from familiar to strange.
Finally–and I can’t confirm this one–one of my biggest gripes about the old BLSConnect (communicated to External Affairs when they held a small group session last year on the topic) was that there was no way to tell when a class had updated its page or posted a new document. Yet there does not appear to be anything new there, though since none of my professors uses it much (and who would?), I am not able to test this hypothesis. At least it’s front-and-center after login, meaning fewer clicks. Was a little green “(1)” too much to ask?
[...] Spring Exhibition Opening Reception • 8th Annual Barrister’s Ball • New BLSConnect Launch • Nicholas Allard named New Dean • ILS’ Around the World [...]
Someone told me today that Phil Allred got his job because someone in his family gave a bunch of money to the school. True or not, its the only reason I can think of to explain why he is still there. The piece you write takes a stab at cuteness, but fails to capture the widespread OUTRAGE most students feel over everything having to do with IT at Brooklyn. If Allred ever gets the site up and running (doubtful), he should think about teaching a clinic on Bungling and Ineptitude. Heads should roll over this bs.