1️Creating logical data paths

When creating a website template, of course it's important to think about the layout and placement of the information, but traditionally, this was easy since the content was already known at the time of designing the website. Here, we don't know what the content will be, or how long it will be, or what things come with the content. Let me explain.

It's a lot easier to think about the data first, at least at a basic level, before jumping into the design.

Take a researchers contact information. On the default Uniweb profile there are two places where a research can enter phone number and email, and two places where they can enter an address

Starting with a phone number and email. The two places with this information are:

• The information section

• The alternate contact information section

This example is fairly clear cut. Of course it makes sense to take the information from the information section as that is what the researcher determined to be their primary contact information. we can use this tag to show the path that we want the information to come from

Data path tag showing how to define the source of data on a website template.

Looking at a physical address is more difficult though, the two places with this information are:

• Office hours section

• Research places

However, these serve two different purposes. As the designer, you must make the choice of where to get the data from and make the decision as to which one is more relevant for the website.

Research places seems more appropriate for a website since most of the people looking for office hours would already have a Uniweb profile and could find this by browsing profiles not the website. But the onus is still on you to make the decision.

Now, the thing with these fields is that they're not required. Researchers don't need to enter any information relating to their physical address. So what happens then?