The New Yale Directory -- Vision, Strategy, Design and Implementation

Yale School of Management

We have asked many people the question: "How often do you search for someone at Yale?" and the overwhelming response has been "Daily" or at least "Several times a week." Given that the Yale Directory is an essential application, and is used frequently by the Yale community, we sought to improve the experience of finding someone at Yale by (1) reducing the time spent on searching, and (2) improving user satisfaction. Code-named "Better People Search", the new Yale Directory project arose from a desire to help contribute productivity back to Yale. It required re-designing the application to allow for intelligent suggestions that appear on-the-fly. We will discuss the project from vision to implementation.