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Grinnell College in Iowa had a website that wasn’t representing the school well, and an intranet system that had been hijacked by users to bypass the main site. When tasked with redesigning the site, Grinnell needed to differentiate itself from its peers, and bring users back. Grinnell boasts rigorous academics, an active campus, and fantastic facilities, but many schools can claim the same. One differentiator is that Grinnell celebrates the individual. Through its welcoming culture of self-governance and the ability to create your own curriculum, the college empowers students to carve their own way through the college experience. It is not the only school that allows a student to do this, though it is one of the few. So we asked: how do we distinguish Grinnell's unique take on crafting an individual education from its peers? How do we show the activities and news happening on campus? How does Grinnell bring users back from the intranet? How do we make as many departments as possible happy with a full redesign? And lastly, how do we best use Drupal to make it all happen? We decided to demonstrate it with a website that allows users to customize their experience on the site. Learn how Grinnell College, Promet Source (the developers) and Rogue Element (the design firm) worked together to create a customizable website: how Rogue designed it, how Promet built it and how Grinnell planned to use it.
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Website of DreamsIf You Build it, Will They Come?
ROGUE ELEMENT : PROMET SOURCE : #MCS2
Rogue Elementwww.rogue-element.com
Rob Coleman
@rogueelementinc @mwskatecast
Allison Manley
The Problem
Goals for the New Site
• Smaller site
• Easier publishing workflow
• Represent the brand
• Express Grinnell’s distinctiveness
• Bring ALL users back
• Build a new information architecture
Step 1: The Audit
Audit: Key Findings
• Brand was strong for Grinnellians,
but not at all for the uninitiated
• Navigation was a mess
• Drupal Issues
• User Engagement
“It looks like the website for a bank.”
“I can’t find anything on this site.”
What We Heard
Prospective StudentsDuring your last visit to the Grinnell
College website, were you able to
find what you were looking for?
During your last visit to the Grinnell
College website, were you able to
find what you were looking for?
Current Students
The CMS
Engagement
Step 2: The Process
“A brand we can all be proud of.”
Concept Statements
• Home & Horizon
• Unexpected
• Individuality
Prototyping “Individuality”
Design #1
Design #2
Design #3
Customized Tile System
Top = Curated
Below = User’s Choice
How About a Custom Tile?
Create An Account
Performance
Other Benefits
• No roles-based navigation:
the masthead is uber-simple.
• Truly makes the home page the hub
from which you could go.
Office / Department Pages
Wireframes
Content: “feed the beast!”
> 1200 Fields < 350 Fields
Step 3: Infrastructure
Content Strategy
• Page count reduced from
27,000 to 5,000 pages
• Supporting a new publishing workflow
Consolidating Tiles?
Taxonomy
Balancing Control and Autonomy
Did it Work? Will They Come?
User Testing
Results to Date
• Challenging users to generate
current content
• Initial launch — iterative
changes as feedback comes in
Could Other Schools Replicate This?
• Can you sell it internally?
• Do you have an agreed-upon brand?
• Can you get buy-in from departments?
• Do you want a site that’s an evolving story?
• Can you assign a Product Owner?
• Can you feature-freeze?
Threats?
• They may say things you don’t want to hear
• It is difficult to change behaviors
• More content = More content management
Benefits?
• Authentic communication
• Engages the school community
• Puts the school into real conversations
• Provides real utility to users
• Meaningful and useable administration
and workflow
Thank you!
John [email protected]
@PrometSource
@rogueelementinc
Allison Manley@mwskatecast
Grinnell images by Justin Hayworth
