Company:
Dom & Tom
Role:
Lead UX Designer
Project Type:
Responsive Website
UI designer
Engineers
QA
Project Manager
Account Lead
Client’s rebranding and web team
The client had 11 independent sites that their different centers ran, and they wanted to combine them into a flexible parent site to encompass all of Milken Institute’s centers, their vast array of disciplines, and content. They wanted to create a CMS that was accessible to different contributor types and set different tiers of administrative access.
Qualitative data from the customer service department revealed that existing site visitors often called the office for event programs or research papers. The original sites were data-dense, had no search, or the search functionality did not provide any filtering.
Along with the feedback from customer service, I did a module and content audit of all the client’s existing sites to get familiar with the content and begin to bucket types that could overlap.
Taking what was learned from the audit, the team and I proposed a new architecture for the site. This client requested the homepage have three different states catered to the conferences they held.
The client wanted customizable pages where users could browse and discover the breadth of their content before diving into it. We created templates and sectioned them on various tiers.
The Milken Institute was undergoing a rebranding, and they were planning their most significant event of the year; with this in mind, my director and I created a release plan for the templates that would support all of the client’s needs while the rest of the redesign was underway.
Initially, the client was wary of the templates because they didn’t feel flexible enough for their centers to customize. Drupal offers block modules; we decided to utilize them to create templates that could be interchangeable and reused across the site to create custom pages. Each center page had its requirements on what they wanted to show; we had to consider each center when making the blocks.
First, I sketched out some blocks for the different content types. After securing the functionality of each block, I moved on to medium-fidelity wireframes and planned out how each block would accommodate mobile and tablet.
With the blocks established, I could build the home and center home pages.
With the delivery of the home pages using the module blocks, the client could see the page's flexibility and customization. They agreed with our recommendation to omit the three homepage states, and we could further simplify the template tiers. The client provided a restructure of the centers and their center-specific content pages. They also requested that articles and reports be combined and a section for programs made.
The client specifically requested to have the event detail template completed during the first release of templates. The Milken Institute’s Global Conference is held annually, with famous speakers and leaders worldwide attending its’ panels. The conference also brings the most significant influx of traffic to the site, so the page must accommodate a variety of information and content. The Event page was broken into several children pages to ensure all the data displayed was not overwhelming the user.
Once the new architecture, module blocks, homepage, and event page templates were approved, we could complete and submit the mockups for the detail and discovery pages.
