News
New Media Team Partners with School of Journalism on Project
October 31, 2007
IU journalism students generate stories, photography, and video from exciting places all over the globe (case in point, Andrew Prinsen's blog from India—great photography!).
So when journalism staff asked us to partner with them to create a better Web site that reflected this work, among other things, we were ready to help. In addition to developing outlets for student work, they wanted to highlight the school's vibrant community and classic education, keep students and alumni engaged, and attract more great students. All in a day's work for us.
We began by conducting research, then developed a completely new information architecture that helped to create a more user-friendly experience and introduced blogging and chatting to their navigation. The youthful, colorful visual design creates distinctive sets of navigation and overall, delivers the information in a more visually appealing manner than the previous site. In fact, the “See, Do, Chat, Blog” buttons in the top right of the page led us to coin a new term in our office: "candy buttons."
Designer Kathleen Chmelewski says the partnership was a success. Journalism school staff integrated their content management system and the IU events calendar with the new design templates and launched the site on September 13. The school’s staff and students wrote fresh, new content and have been dedicated to updating the site’s text and images almost daily since the September launch—nearly all the feature stories linked from the home page are written by students.
