Posted by EatonGolden | Mar 16th, 2009 2:41pm
Many of us recognize the name Lifetouch as the school picture pros. But what you might not know is that their talented photographers do senior portraits, as well.
Lifetouch National School Studios partnered with EatonGolden to provide the site strategy, information architecture, design, and development of the new site.
We built a high-performance XHTML site and used the jQuery library (+ plugins including HighSlide and Accordian) for added functionality. We brought Lifetouch’s design vision to life using advanced Adobe Flash 3D animations.
View the site: lifetouchseniorportraits.com
Posted in Development, Information Architecture, Interface Design & Prototyping
Posted by John | Mar 6th, 2009 10:01am
Granted, enterprise-wide content management systems can be lifesavers for massive transactional web sites with content that requires uniform and regular updating across many divisions. They provide a ton of functionality such as managing workflow, publishing schedules and asset management to name a few.
The problems with many large-scale CMS tools become apparent when managing a small content driven site that doesn’t require all that horsepower. When audience and business needs evolve, and the web site can’t easily evolve with them, it becomes costly and time intensive to make changes to templates, navigation, and page structure.
In our current economy, these hurdles usually cause businesses to relegate user and “less important” business needs to the sidelines, in favor of conforming to the CMS.
Some examples that come to mind:
- We need to apply new brand standards, but can’t because it would mean changing the templates.
- We need to add links and new features to our home page tomorrow, but based on current IT resources, it will take 4 weeks.
- We need to add a section to the web site to address a new audience, but that would mean a template change, so we’ll build a mini site instead.
- We need to add functionality, but don’t have the IT resources to do it. So instead, we’ll build an externally hosted application and push it in the site using an iFrame.
Lately we’ve been getting a lot of requests from our clients for ways to “bypass the big CMS.” Our solution has been to design small content management systems and administration tools for our clients that are easy-to-use and can change with their business. We design them around the user-experience, instead of the other way around. As a result, our clients receive a flexible, affordable, and customizable tool that can be modified to accommodate their business strategy and unique content needs.
Posted in Development, Useful Tips, User Experience
