ICE web project recap

ICE’s web project was planned in response to increased dissatisfaction with the current site and ICE’s ongoing commitment to its increasing global membership.

Interactive design consultancies were invited to submit strategy drafts and design proposals to ICE’s web team, who reviewed these proposals against the current needs of our members.

One design consultancy in particular caught our attention for a few reasons:

1.) Their advice regarding the required updates to the new site was honest and forthright. They understood the shortcomings of the current site and offered realistic suggestions for the new site.
2.) They were clearly familiar with the challenges and needs of a large membership organisation such as ICE; personalisation and regionalisation capabilities were the hallmarks of their proposals.
3.) Their various design visuals were sleek and intuitive.
4.) They offered their service at a competitive price.

Once their proposal was accepted, the ICE web team further refined the requirements of the new website. This entailed wide consultation with ICE’s membership and external stakeholders.

We found that site users cited two requirements in particular:

1.) That the new site be easy to navigate and equipped with an efficient and accurate search engine
2.) That the new site be tailored to each individual user’s particular needs and location

Once these requirements were documented and confirmed, the web design consultancy went straight to work conceiving basic blueprints and navigational frameworks. These wireframes constitute the skeleton of the new site:

A general layout and design concept was approved by Council and signed off by ICE Directors. The ICE web team then drew up a project plan outlining when specific sections and subsections of the new site would be engineered, tested, and debugged.

The project plan is divided into pre-development and development phases. Within these phases, the plan is further divided into scheduled blocks of web development referred to as “sprints”. Each subsection of the new site (ie ‘Membership’, ‘News’, ‘Events’) has its own sprint, during which templates are turned into functional web pages.

The technical development team (Thomas Telford eBusiness) began integrating templates for the ‘Events’ section of the new site in June 2009. The events module, or sprint 1, is now complete: the new pages have been engineered by eBusiness, tested by eCommunications and members of the events team and other key users, and then debugged by eBusiness.

All remaining sections of the new site will be similarly developed. eBusiness and eCommunications are currently hard at work on the News and Regions & Topics modules – or sprints 2 and 3 – of the new site.

Throughout the remainder of the project, we’ll be posting updated visuals, project features, and progress reports to this blog. In the meantime, have a look at our web project glossary for a better understanding of some of the commonly used web development terms.