The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) is a college of the University of London and an extremely diverse organisation. We were commissioned to re-design the public face of the college and were delighted to see the website go live with over 14,000 pages (yes, fourteen thousand pages!) in November 2007.
When we were commissioned, SOAS had already spent considerable time and resource on the project and had done a great deal of work on the information design for the new site. However, the project had stalled as they had not engaged with a design partner to create a new look and feel that reflected the many aspects of the organisation.
9web beat off tough competition to win the pitch with our understanding of the Higher Education sector and clear process driven approach cited as the main deciding factors.
After initial brand briefing and planning sessions with a web development team of 6, the 9web design team developed 3 initial creative concepts that were presented to a wider group of 20 key stakeholders representing all arms of the organisation (including senior academics, business users, admissions tutors, IT and Marketing). The concepts were based around their existing brand identity, their current undergraduate prospectus and a more corporate approach that was communicated during the initial briefings.
The feedback from such a diverse group was overwhelmingly positive and a design direction was decided at the first workshop. A second iteration of designs was then developed, the look and feel evolved over two further workshops and a round of internal usability testing conducted by the Interactive Learning team. The agreed design was then taken into XHTML/CSS production for implementation on to the Rhythmyx Content Management System.
Hannah Lemon - Communications Manager, SOASSOAS is delighted to be working with 9web on the redesign of our site. Their understanding of the HE sector and intuitive approach to our design needs greatly impressed us throughout the tender and has been evident in the meetings we've had with Ian and the team. The feedback from our internal focus groups on their designs has also been uniformly positive.
Since the project was signed-off, we have continued to work with SOAS to design a separate site for the Centre of Financial and Management Studies (CeFiMS) and to work with the Language Centre to promote the breadth of their services via their section in the corporate site.
9web is now the preferred supplier for web design services for SOAS and we are currently in coversation with the web team about further improvements to the site - watch this space.
Hannah Lemon - Communications Manager, SOASWe are very pleased to formalise our partnership with 9web. The 9web team are a pleasure to work with and not only deliver promptly against spec but consistently devise improvements that add greatly to the value of the site. Their responsiveness, flexibility and creativity have allowed us to develop a diverse site that caters to a range of needs while maintaining consistency throughout. We look forward to working with them more in the future.
