Emory University School of Medicine
They’re the ones the world calls on in a public health crisis, or for a groundbreaking new treatment. So they needed a site that would stand up to the task.
Nuts &
Bolts
Timeline
December 2017 – March 2018, with ongoing follow-on work
Project Scope
- Discovery and audience research
- Information architecture, UX, and content strategy
- Design system, branding, and messaging strategy
- Front end development of pattern library, with extended style guide
- Content training and governance
CMS
Cascade CMS
Site Size
About 500 pages in the first launch
The Emory University School of Medicine's reach is massive — they offer 106 accredited programs and more than half of the residency training positions in Georgia.
Their faculty complete more than 5 million patient visits each year. And they’re one of the fastest-growing research institutions in NIH awards, with $395 million in sponsored research in 2020.
They needed a website to help audiences navigate the complex institutional structure, and a bold design to reflect their passion for what they do.
We met with stakeholders. We talked with students. We toured hospitals and classrooms. We conducted workshops to learn what their people believe in, from executive leaders to physicians to admin staff.
The result is a site that shows who they are and speaks to its many audiences with one voice. And a community of professionals equipped to deliver a top-tier digital experience.
Other parts of the project included:
- Planning an intranet to serve internal audiences and let the public website be a cleaner, more effective marketing tool
- Messaging strategy to reflect a recent leadership change and fit within Emory University’s new rebrand
- Pattern library with extended use guidelines and trainings showing content contributors how to put the pieces together
Beyond Standards and Strategy Docs
Overhauling content for a redesign is a huge job for a client team, including editorial work, managing stakeholder expectations, and laying out each page in new design components.
In addition to the central site, there were 30 departmental websites managed by different groups, each with its own structure, template, and tech platform.
To encourage them to adopt the new system, we created templates, trainings, and guidelines to support site admins as they migrated and maintained their subdomains over a phased rollout, and provided one-on-one coaching in an “office hours” format.
