When TuftsLife launched a redesign last March in an effort to streamline the site and make it more accessible from mobile devices, many students were disappointed with the changes. Finding the new version difficult to navigate, some stopped using the website altogether.
Now, the website is primarily used to post classified ads, but juniors Tony Cannistra and Tara Kola are heading a small team of student programmers to bring TuftsLife back to its original role: an aggregator of all events happening on and around the Tufts campus.
"TuftsLife became basically dead," Kola said. "Tony and I were both among the students who didn't feel too positively about the redesign, which is why we wanted to take another shot at it."
Last year's relaunch was not executed with the average user in mind, Cannistra explained. Rather than updating event postings and classified listings, the students in charge of that redesign focused on features many students don't want or use, such as adding apps and news.
Additionally, many found the three-column layout confusing; some even said creating a simple post became problematic. John LiBassi, a staff assistant for the Department of Sociology, has been trying unsuccessfully to use TuftsLife since last year's redesign.
"As a staff member, I often need to publicize department events to the Tufts community," he told the Daily in an email. "Without access to TuftsLife, staff and faculty are limited to posting on department websites, taking out advertisements in the Daily and circulating flyers. None of these methods are as convenient or immediate as TuftsLife, and they are likely to reach a smaller audience."
The site's plunge in popularity has caused the Tufts community to question its ownership and management. According to Joseph Golia, director of the Office for Campus Life , staff and administrators often assume the OCL is in charge of the site and call him when they experience difficulties using it. In the past year, however, the students in charge of the new TuftsLife have not contacted the OCL at all.
"It's a point of frustration for our office," Golia said. "We don't have any answers. ... We are just as lost and in the dark about TuftsLife. It's a student organization, [but] we have no contact information. We don't know that much about it."
Junior Tyler Lubeck, who has been working on the project since the beginning of the semester, said that TuftsLife is a student organization that receives Tufts Community Union Senate funding, which goes toward paying for server space and the site's domain name, among other things.
"The university definitely does have involvement with the site," he said. "They let us do what we want, but they also do the funding so we can exist."
Kola said further administrative support would be helpful, particularly if the university were to pay students to work on TuftsLife.
"It's not uncommon for the university to pay students who work on other things, like Tufts WebServices," she said. "[TuftsLife] is a product that is so useful to the student body, and a better product might come out of it if students felt like they were being paid for their work."
Golia said TuftsLife has come up in recent discussions with the TCU Senate. While students have been working on the site all year, no one in the OCL has been updated on their progress, he said. In particular, there have been some discussions about whether TuftsLife should remain a student group or be operated by the administration.
"There are so many different ways to look at it whether it does become a university thing or [remains] a student group that's funded [by TCU]," Golia said. "If they come to us, certainly, we would help ... it was a student thing, and if students want ... [support], then they should bring it back. We would be interested if students wanted to come talk to us about how the administration can help them manage this year to year."
Regardless of whether TuftsLife seeks out administrative assistance, Cannistra said he believes the new site will be ready for the Tufts community in the coming months.
"Ideally, it will be available in the fall," he said. "I'm going to stand by that."
Kola explained that the group has been designing the new TuftsLife from the ground up, Kola said.
"One of the issues with the current TuftsLife is that the code is so messy, [so] we are starting completely from scratch," she said. "We're going a lot slower with building the site, so as a result, we're spending a lot more time talking with people and making sure we've created features that are meaningful to the student population.
Cannistra explained that one of the issues that is particularly relevant to professors and faculty is automatic post approval. Unfortunately, this feature sometimes fails to work. The team is hoping to find a better solution and incorporate it into the revamped version. Cannistra also noted that the layout of the site will change, making it easier for users to find events that appeal to them.
"The new TuftsLife is going to feature a pretty calendar-heavy approach," Cannistra said. "We're definitely still going to have a classifieds section, but the main focus is getting the word out about events."
"We're focusing on separating events and listings into two separate pages or tabs on the same page, so people aren't bombarded with both," Kola added.12
