Page 9 - CT Innovation in Education, November 2021

the community and the breadth of offerings. We put that into a framework that can be used during the next phase, where the website will be designed and built.
The design and development phase is entirely collaborative, bringing the whole project team together — designers, technology experts, project managers, the client team and the project leaders. As we develop the components of the digital experiences, they’re tested to make sure we’re not moving
too far away from what is understandable and usable from all audience perspectives, but also for where the institution is going.
Customers approve. As the chief marketing and communications officer for Emory University’s Goizueta Business School said, “We were using a legacy CMS that didn’t afford us the flexibility or functionality to deliver a modern, dynamic design or user experience. Mediacurrent helped us solve this problem through a design and user experience that aligned with our brand and engaged our audiences.”
The Beginning of a New Road
The secret to staging your “front door” for the world as it is today is to consider how the best digital players are solving the same problems. Pay particular attention to the experiences that speak to all visitors, those who are first-generation,
international or somehow otherwise non-traditional. In the course of your work, don’t get ensnared in a
proprietary approach. Make sure the content management route you follow provides multilingual capabilities, accessibility, security and stability, integration with your other core systems and affordability. Mediacurrent specializes in working with Drupal, a highly flexible, open-source content management system. We recommend to higher ed clients that they leverage Acquia’s Digital Experience Platform (DXP). Acquia is powered by Drupal and was co-founded by the founder of Drupal. We have trusted this platform for 10-plus years to create meaningful customer experiences in higher education.
Don’t worry too much about first-day jitters. Your new website’s launch is really just the beginning of a longer journey. Nothing is ever done. Launching is like building up a muscle. It gets stronger and better with every day of effort. Your job is to think about what’s next, where you want to go, where to push and where to stand back, what to learn and what to change.
Elliott Mower is the creative strategy director of product for Mediacurrent, a digital agency that uses open-source technologies to create digital experiences for purpose-built institutions and organizations.
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