Summer 1999 Newsletter

The New CIS Website - Not Just Another Pretty Interface

In May, the Center for Integrated Systems presented a completely new design and architecture for CIS's website to partner company representatives, faculty, staff and guests at the spring Advisory Committee (AdCom) meeting. Web design project manager, Christine Quinn , of Stanford MediaWorks Services, led the audience assembled in the CISX Auditorium through numerous improvements being made to www-cis.stanford.edu.

The new site features easier to use navigation, search engines for projects and people, an at-a-glance calendar of events, and many other useful innovations. The research projects database (searchable by title, faculty, or keywords) exemplifies the comprehensive and user-friendly quality CIS has endeavored to maintain throughout the site. With cooperation from many sources, a project team of students and staff is currently compiling data for the new research, faculty and student databases. CIS will maintain these databases as a major channel to showcase Stanford students and research to our partner companies.

With almost a year of organization and planning behind it, the new website has benefited substantially from the ideas and suggestions put forth by CIS member companies at the 1998 fall AdCom meeting. An added feature to the CIS website is the new "Complete the Circuit, Become a CIS Friend" section, which puts users on a mailing list to receive targeted emails and mailings in their areas of interest. Becoming a CIS Friend also gives users an opportunity to make suggestions and send feedback about their experience using the site. CIS hopes for broad participation, especially by partner company employees and alumni, and looks forward to keeping the engineering community "in touch" through this channel. As always, if you have any questions about the website, please feel free to contact any of the CIS administrative staff.