Current State Audit — Phase 0 Baseline

Current State Audit — Phase 0 Baseline

Date: 2026-09-06
Production URL: https://lyimeng23.github.io/
Repository: lyimeng23/lyimeng23.github.io
Baseline commit: eaa702ad (feat(homepage): center personal profile before research narrative)

Baseline status

  • git pull --ff-only origin main: up to date.
  • Working tree: clean before baseline capture.
  • Production Jekyll build: passed with Jekyll 3.9.3 in jekyll/jekyll:4.
  • Generated homepage: 6 content sections after the Hero.
  • Full-page screenshots were captured at 1440px, 1280px, 768px, and 390px. The screenshot pass emulated prefers-reduced-motion: reduce so every reveal element is visible in the complete-page artifacts.
  • No horizontal overflow was detected at any baseline viewport.

Baseline screenshots

Viewport Page height Scroll width Screenshot
Desktop 1440 × 1100 9,381px desktop-1440.png
Desktop 1280 × 1000 9,331px desktop-1280.png
Tablet 768 × 1024 9,522px tablet-768.png
Mobile 390 × 844 13,980px mobile-390.png

All four captures reported scrollWidth == clientWidth, 5 Vision stages, and zero hidden reveal elements under reduced motion.

Current homepage structure

The current reading order is:

  1. Hero — identity, Ph.D. candidate / Michigan State University, Spatial Intelligence headline, portrait, and links to About, Research, Projects, Publications, and CV.
  2. About — personal profile, advisor, education, research interests, affiliation, CV, activities, Google Scholar, and GitHub.
  3. Research Vision — five stages with the current evidence labels: Published foundation ×3, Future agenda ×1, and Current research ×1.
  4. Featured Research — Hydra, Proteus, Adonis, and Cognitive Driving as capability evidence.
  5. Publications — four highlighted papers/artifacts and the complete seven-item record.
  6. Highlights — six featured news items, currently latest from July 2025.

Current source of truth

Concern Current files Baseline behavior
Page entry and metadata index.md, _config.yml Homepage title/description, canonical URL, keywords, CV and profile links.
Layout _layouts/default.html, _layouts/homepage.html Shared document shell; homepage includes Hero → About → Vision → Featured → Publications → Highlights.
Navigation _includes/nav.html, _data/nav.yml Sticky desktop nav; keyboard-accessible mobile toggle; Research, Projects, Publications, Activities, About.
Identity _includes/hero.html, _includes/about.html Personal identity is present before research content.
Research definition _includes/vision.html, _data/vision.yml Five-stage Spatial Intelligence ladder with stage-specific evidence status and visual overlays.
Research evidence _includes/featured.html, _data/featured.yml Four capability-labeled studies with Problem / Contribution copy and links.
Publication record _includes/publications.html, _data/publications.yml Highlighted record plus all publications; links to PDFs, papers, code, slides, BibTeX, and dataset where available.
Milestones _includes/highlights.html, _data/news.yml, news.md Homepage teaser shows six featured entries; full timeline is /news/.
Styling assets/css/main.scss, _sass/_tokens.scss, _sass/_base.scss, _sass/_layout.scss, _sass/_components.scss, _sass/_motion.scss Tokenized SCSS, warm paper / MSU green palette, editorial spacing, responsive layout, reveal motion.
Runtime assets/js/main.js Native JS only: reveal-on-scroll, reduced-motion handling, IntersectionObserver fallback, mobile nav.
Build dependencies Gemfile, Gemfile.lock GitHub Pages / Jekyll 3.9 stack, jekyll-sitemap, Webrick, Ruby stdlib gems.

Current image and artifact inventory

  • Identity: assets/img/avatar3_lyimeng.webp, favicon, and conference photos.
  • Research visuals: assets/files/hydra.webp, proteus.webp, Adonis.webp, hydrabench.webp, mmleaf.webp, AeroEcho.webp, and biodetection.webp.
  • Driving visuals: project/senior-driving/images/*.webp, including the road-scene driving_bg.webp and project gallery images.
  • Publication artifacts: PDFs, PPTX slide decks, and BibTeX text files under assets/files/.
  • Project pages: /project/senior-driving/ uses the shared project layout; the independently authored /project/caspianpost/ page includes its own privacy and terms pages.

What is already established and must not regress

  • The site remains a personal academic homepage: Yimeng Liu, role, affiliation, advisor, education, contact, CV, scholarly profile, and service links are visible.
  • The Spatial Intelligence positioning is explicit and does not describe the work as only a publication list.
  • Existing research artifacts remain local and linked; no new stock imagery or unverified project result is needed for the next phases.
  • Published / Current / Future distinctions are represented in source data and must remain explicit.
  • The current Jekyll architecture, shared layouts, WebP image assets, native JS, keyboard focus styles, and reduced-motion path should be preserved.
  • The CaspianPost page was previously kept as a secondary non-research build; any next decision about it must be made deliberately rather than accidentally deleting it.

Baseline issues reserved for later phases

  • The Vision sequence is still five alternating stage panels; it is not yet one unified physical scene that progressively gains observations, objects, relations, temporal state, predictions, and actions.
  • The current visual overlays are explanatory diagrams over separate research images, not a single coherent ego-vehicle / pedestrian / road / interaction scene.
  • Featured cards communicate capability labels, but do not yet consistently expose the requested Research Question → Core Idea → Visual Evidence → Key Result → Link format or quantitative results.
  • The past → present → future transition is distributed across the page rather than expressed as one explicit research leap.
  • The homepage still spends attention on a six-item Highlights block whose newest source entry is July 2025; no 2026 research milestone is present in _data/news.yml.
  • Publication, SEO, accessibility, performance, and external-link checks need to be rerun after each later phase; this file records the starting point, not final acceptance.

Phase 0 acceptance

The baseline answers what currently exists, what must not break, and what remains to change. No design or content source was modified in Phase 0; only this audit and the four baseline screenshot artifacts were added.