Launch: College of Medicine, FIU Health, Medical Library

We recently launched the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine (HWCOM) website, along with its sister sites, FIU Health and Medical Library  The three-part project was a “design by committee,” which can be a nightmare if it isn’t streamlined properly.  Thankfully, both our team and HWCOM had project managers who could funnel all the requests and feedback.  The launch deadline for the project was particularly important because the College of Medicine needed to meet accreditation requirements or their sites.

Behind the curtain

This project was unique because we designed an developed a database for all three sites simultaneously.  JavaScript is used to feed database information into profile pages and a searchable directory for all three sites, as well as specialty pages listing the areas of expertise for the physicians of FIU Health.  During the development, the team learned about what goes into an multipurpose database and the best way to implement each of the client’s requirements.  This project was taught us a few lessons on how to handle different languages (PHP, JavaScript) within our CMS and forced us to rethink how we couple them.

 Pixel Perfect

The designs for all three sites were aligned with the FIU homepage design. This project was a challenge as far as design because we had several versions of wireframes for each of the three sites.  These three sites were the tailored to meet the client’s design and functionality requests to a tee, so each person on our team was able to get their hands dirty in the process of multiple design and functionality updates.  We are continuing to make updates to the design so it better suits the client branding and content needs.

Content Strategy

Our team was invited to the final committee meeting before launch so we could answer any final questions and address the final concerns of each person involved.  While this may sound like a hellish experience, it was actually an opportunity to educate the stakeholders on why we did certain things the way we did and make suggestions for them to improve the website in the future. One example is the way we chose to address their concern about losing and confusing visitors who clicked the link to view the news stories featured in their banners.  They wanted to force users into a new window/tab to view the story (hosted on the university news site) so they wouldn’t leave the site. We explained that wasn’t a good practice and offered the alternative of hosting the news stories in an internal newsroom.  They didn’t have a response to the suggestions at the meeting, but less than a week later they emailed us asking if we could make that exact suggested change. *big grin* It was kind of like Inception, but without the crazy sound effect.

FIU Web Communications is a full service web team that provides support and consulting for departments at FIU. If you need help in implementing any of your web needs, please contact us.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing via rss feed or email to have future articles delivered to you.