Fall 2025 Web Editor Summit discusses AI for content management and ‘UX blindness’

At its annual fall Web Editor Summit, the Web Support & Usability (WSU) team in UIT University Support Services (USS) imparted some “golden nuggets” gleaned at the 2025 Digital Collegium annual conference, including key search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and artificial intelligence (AI) integration. The team also highlighted the importance of user research to avoid “user experience (UX) blindness” and improve website usability.

WSU Director Barb Iannucci kicked off the event, held November 17, 2025, in Marriott Library’s Gould Auditorium, by addressing the team’s expanded responsibilities in lieu of Deputy Chief Information Officer Ken Pink's retirement. Changes include the expansion of her directorial portfolio to include the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Salesforce team and the promotion of   to manager of Web Development and Support.

“If you know her, you love her,” Iannucci said. “Emily’s going to be taking on a lot of my management responsibilities for the web support team’s operations. She’s well suited to take this and run with it because she’s made so many operational improvements  during her tenure with the group. I’m really excited to give her this well-deserved opportunity.”

Iannucci also emphasized the importance of complying with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prior to the April 24, 2026, deadline. She encouraged web editors to connect with the University Webmasters Community of Practice, which administers a Microsoft Teams team and virtual bi-monthly forum, for web accessibility support and training.

Here’s a recap of other topics discussed:

• Abbey Allen, a web developer and content support specialist, introduced new Font Awesome icon packs that feature eight new styles (Chili, Etch, Jelly, Notdog, Slab, Thumbprint, Utility, and Whiteboard). Allen also gave an overview of Google’s Looker Studio, which allows users to view analytics on a university webpage without access to a Google Analytics account. The team is integrating Looker Studio, which gives insights into traffic sources, landing pages, events, devices, and browser usage, into all new sites and adding it to existing sites.
  
  
• Josh Leigh, UX designer and web support specialist, discussed the importance of optimizing keywords for SEO, like using preferred search terms and culturally common keywords (e.g., “cost of attendance” instead of/or alongside “tuition”). Leigh also noted the need to optimize AI-driven systems, which can analyze site content even when it’s excluded from traditional search results (a “Bits & Bytes” online session in January will teach building custom GPTs). Leigh also recommends saying thank you at some point in your AI search query, “in case the robots do rise up.”
  
  Lastly, Leigh outlined the web design process, including discovery, planning, design, and testing. He urged researching other universities’ websites, “mood boarding,” and seeking inspiration from sites like Dribble and Pinterest, in addition to low-risk activities like sketching a design with pen and paper.
  
  “Doing exercises like this can flesh out ideas, so when you get into Modern Campus, you’re not sitting there trying to figure out how you’re going to structure your website,” he said.
  
  
• Dan Gillen, user interface (UI) developer, discussed UX blindness, a concept similar to “nose blindness,” where rather than your sense of smell becoming less sensitive to familiar smells over time, web admins overlook usability flaws in their sites.
  
  “We get used to seeing and navigating our site, and we know where things are like the back of our hand. We feel like we know our users and how they interact with the site, but we may overlook things,” Gillen said. “The problem is users come to the site and can’t find what they need easily. They have to deal with the smell.”
  
  Gillen stressed the importance of user research to identify issues and improve websites, with methods and tools like treejack testing, first click testing, card sorting, and website analytics platforms like Google Analytics and Looker Studio.
  
  
• Iannucci wrapped up the meeting by reminding attendees of the services her team provides, including website redesigns, user testing, accessibility audits, and document remediation for outdated PDFs — a concern because PDFs may be problematic to screen readers, and AI may still surface them in search results.
  
  “We know there are a lot of PDFs on websites out there, so if you’re just feeling like you don’t want to deal with those, we’ll deal with them, for a low fee,” she said.
  
  Iannucci also mentioned that the university is in the process of obtaining an enterprise ChatGPT license, the details of which will be communicated via email.

 

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