Tagged with 'Website Launch'

You’re at the point in the discovery phase of a project when you learn your client has a limited budget and their site needs to be live in weeks. “Argh” you think to yourself - if they only had a longer deadline and more cash we could really do a knock out job and not sacrifice all the whiz-bang features.

Constraints are an unavoidable reality of every project. Instead of wishing your client had more resources, stop and embrace the project’s constraints. Having too little time and money makes you examine the goals of your project and helps you create simple and efficient ways to solve your client’s problems.

Possibilities are endless but constraints are knowns that force you to focus on core issues of the project while cutting out all of the extraneous background noise of the “bells and whistle” features that are usually non-essential to solving the problem.

We recently took on a project for the Illinois Institute of Technology who had an extremely tight deadline to get a site up to promote a new university-wide planning process aimed at reestablishing IIT as a major force in higher education. The site was intended to give background on the plan and solicit opinions from its faculty, staff and students. Here our major constraint was time. From project start to project completion we clocked in at just less than three weeks turn around, successfully getting a site up that would provide as a means to inform and gather feedback for IIIT. The site is simple and focused but most importantly it solves a problem for our client.

“Man built most nobly when limitations were at their greatest.”
— Frank Lloyd Wright

Illinois officials, a Chicago alderman, a local school council representative, a radio personality, an Olympic medal winner and top Chicago school officials descended on Chicago neighborhood school, Bateman Elementary School, to demonstrate how to strategically use a website launch in pursuit of a greater mission.

The Chicago Public School Alumni website publicly launched today not only with the support of leading public figures - many of whom are CPS alums, but with prominent print and media coverage from most local media. As my colleague, Kelly, and I joined with other guests at the public roll out and watched a short video highlighting the major benefits of the site, it dawned on me (duh!) that I was in the presence of a major and strategic campaign rollout of a significant initiative by the Chicago Public Schools to build community among over 3 million living alumni. And the website Duo had just built and launched was the catalyst for this initiative. Woo Hoo.

Although Duo’s mantra – or one of them, anyway – is that a website should have a job description, it is still a real treat when we get to develop a tool – a website - that is so core to meeting an organization’s business objectives – especially one with such great public purpose. But the real prize today was to witness how the professionals with the Chicago Public Schools have taken the steps necessary to build an ongoing campaign around the roll out of the site.

Tonight I looked at the website analytics and the tangible impact of this first day of the public rollout. It was very exciting. I am confident that the site is in great hands and on its way toward building community and increasing alumni participation for the benefit of all.