Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies
Web Development Case Study
We were approached by the Center for Hemispheric Defense with a request to revamp their old site into something that would be easier to maintain, would attract new prospective students, and would draw focus to more of their key offerings.
During July of 2009, the month-long prototyping process, the typical Design-by-Committee process ensues. CHDS formed a team of 6 key individuals with whom we interacted to determine key needs and desires. We held weekly strategic meetings to guide the development process. The initial prototype was a much more conservative design than the final product, but the concepts were the same. The focus was placed on graphically highlighted news articles, course offerings and publications. Links to quickly access commonly needed features were strategically placed, and a site search feature was added.
CHDS had a major change of location, which greatly delayed the development phase. This proved to be both a blessing and a curse. When we finally entered the development phase, we discovered that opinions on the old conservative design had changed, and a more modern design was created and adopted. At the same time, navigation and content were reworked repeatedly, each version more streamlined and intuitive than its predecessors. Meanwhile, we focused on implementing new features, such as news and event management, into the existing ColdFusion-based CMS.
The process took a total of 3 months, and CHDS is currently waiting on translations to be completed before launching their new web presence. The estimated launch date is May 1st, 2009.