First, they choose not to become the flagship university using Gmail. OK, I fought that fight hard, but lost. I can live with that. The smart strategists over at the Daily Emerald suggested Google's program wouldn't work for a school as big as UO (and our 20,000 students). I guess ASU (and their 65,000 students) didn't get the memo. Nice job Sun Devils.
Next, I tried to help out where I could by offering to redesign Alpha Mail, the University's new open source email program, which is supposed to be their answer for Gmail. It's funny, UO liked Gmail so much they copied it's UI. In the end, it was all a big waste of time... the developer of Alpha mail has moved on, and yet again, the students at UO have an inferior email client because of the poor long term decision making of the UO administration.
Original (and current) Alpha Mail Login:
Alpha Mail Login Redux:
There were some crazy design constraints with this... Apparently UO was trying to develop this system so a bunch of universities could use it and "fight off" gmail (seriously). So the design had to be one that could be used by multiple schools. I tried to keep everything simple, because it's just an email login page - how complicated does it need to be? I've put up several designs, to show how flexibility of the design.
