The project
Epicentre is the center of medical research for Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières). With teams based in Europe and Africa, Epicentre conducts clinical trials and assessments of public health problems in countres throughout the Developing World. At the outset of the project, Epicentre did not have an intranet, and their internet site no longer met current needs. K+A was engaged to develop a plan for revising and replacing the current system.
Our approach
We began to develop a model of how the websites could better support the organization by interviewing representative users. We analyzed the existing Internet site, papers and protocols being prepared for publication, and parallel IT projects. Based on this research, K+A advised Epicentre on the types of content to include on the new site.
User Analysis
We provided a detailed information architecture and developed wireframe models for standard pages of the future sites. These documents became tools for presenting the project to the internal team and developing the project requirements. They served as a means to communicate the details of the project to both the technical developers and the graphic design teams. K+A worked with Epicentre to define the requirements for the Content Management System, as well as recommendations for hosting. We completed this phase with specifications for the server technology, levels of security, and hosting location.
The solution
To minimize the resources needed to manage information on the site, the organization wanted to permit each individual epidemiologist to classify, share and publish their own work, in a single operation, on both the Intranet and (where appropriate) on the Internet. Each contributor is responsible for their their own information. Contextual navigation, managed automatically through metadata provided by each user for their respective contributions, will support fluid naviation and help users become acquainted with the wealth of information available on the Epicentre site. A variety of entry point for the different parts of the target audience provide ways to reach the information. A click-through version of the wire frames were employed online for user testing, to validate the navigation concepts.
Page Wireframe detail
The result
With the detailed requirements provided by K+A, Epicentre was able to send out a request for proposals to technology developers that described their future system in a practical and accurate manner.