Jisc watchers will know that the organisation is going through a major reorganisation at the moment. There’s loads of information about this on the Jisc website so I won’t attempt to badly summarise it here (the news article, “JISC announces new structure to reshape for the future“, is a good place to start).
The new Jisc requires a new website – and that’s where we come in. We’ve been chewing over the best way to do this. The Jisc website is large and complex and it will take some time to transform it completely. However, it needs to keep apace with and reflect the changing organisation, and align with key milestones on the road to the ‘new Jisc’. Time is not on our side in this respect; so we will be approaching the project in phases.
Phase 1 will concentrate on creating a new ‘corporate hub’ for Jisc online. It will have a new information architecture, a new design and revised content. We are also going to build the phase 1 site on a new platform, Drupal. I’m really excited about this as it’s a CMS I’ve been interested in for a while. This is a chance for us to evaluate Drupal under working conditions before making the decision to move the entire site onto it (or explore alternatives) in phase 2.
We have partnered up with user experience and design agency, cxpartners, to take the project forward. We’re at the early stage of stakeholder and user research but I will be sharing stuff as its available and we’d love to hear your feedback. Keep an eye on this blog or follow me on Twitter.
2 replies on “Towards a new Jisc website”
[…] I’m Rich, the other half of the web team. Ben and I are currently working with cxpartners on the development of a new IA, and site for JISC – more about which soon. May 31, 2012 | Filed Under Development, usability, Website | […]
[…] you read this blog regularly, you’ll have probably gathered that we’re going through a complete redesign of the Jisc website. When I arrived the IA had just about been agreed and I jumped straight into the thick of […]