Rebuild & Migration
How to move a gigantic site quickly before it, and everyone working on it, breaks.
Design challengE
Exploratorium.edu was born in 1993, and was one of the first 600 websites on the internet. Ten years ago it was moved into Drupal to better manage it, and since that time it has grown significantly and also proliferated in designs, microsites, and overall complexity.
My RolE
Project manager Wrote scope, timeline, stakeholder and communications management plans. Facilitated presentations of ongoing web work. Managed consulting relationship.
Design ProcESS
Collaborators: Consultant, Museum managing directors
Interviews: Marketing, Content editors, IT integrations,
Comparative & competitive analysis
Information architecture review
User stories
Event / experience deep dive
Entity mapping
Calendar redesign
Solutions
Measures of Success
Secure website with sustainable maintenance
Logically structured & functional back-end
Simplify internal workflow and content management
Make it possible to apply consistent brand /global design changes across website
Strong, productive relationship with consultant
Key learnings
It is more complicated than you can ever imagine
Lift and shift + path-based routing not an option for this level of complexity
Global design changes require a precedent for institutional design approval