Design challenge
The European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO) needed to publish the yearly theme site for the Commission, around the theme ‘Development’. They wanted not just a promotional one-way communication website but a true collaborative platform, with content in 23 languages coming from a wide range of partners, from member states to NGO’s. Time was short as we could only start working on the site 6 months before the launch in early January 2015.
Approach
To create the EYD2015 website, Namahn partnered with web integrator Amplexor. In a first phase, Namahn created an information architecture and made a detailed design for the site. As summer holidays were approaching, most of this work had to be done in just a few weeks, so Namahn decided to conduct co-design workshops to speed up the process and come up with a result that was supported by all stakeholders.
In a second phase, Amplexor took over the lead in the project, with Namahn in support, and started developing the site in Drupal in seven agile sprints. Before the start of each sprint, Namahn’s role was to make sure the designs for that sprint were ready and all functional decisions were taken. Namahn’s deliverables included production-ready front-end code.
Result
The EYD2015 website went online in time and is still running successfully, with many partners publishing stories and events related to the theme year. In spite of the many design restrictions imposed by the Commission’s ‘Information Providers Guidelines’ (IPG), Namahn managed to come up with a clear, attractive design. A solid, consistent information architecture and Amplexor’s agile methodology helped to ensure a smooth implementation process.
