City of Somerville
Early Education Website
Scope of Project
- Content Strategy
- Web Design
- Website Care
The Challenge
The City of Somerville needed to bring a vast array of cutting-edge early childhood resources, teaching guides, and curriculum information to educators throughout the city and beyond. Helping teachers easily find and access these resources was the primary goal for the site. We also needed to ensure the site was inclusive and accessible for all and was equipped with a great content management system to easily make updates and additions for many years to come.
The Solution
Through an extensive discovery and sitemap process we identified important content and resources and helped organize the site architecture. We created user journeys that help educators easily access best-practices in early education and we built a filterable library of resources where educators can read, download assessments, watch videos, and print the information that helps with their teaching and classrooms.
Designing the User Experience
We created a strategic homepage and user journey to help the most common users find what they are looking for quickly.
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Creating a Welcoming and Inclusive Design
Photo shoots at local early childhood education programs helped bring a realistic and welcoming feel to the design of the site. Creating as much accessible content as possible not only helped meet accessibility standards but also helps all users find useful web-based content more easily through searches and responsive design. And adding Google translate functionality was just one more step to help quickly ensure content is accessible to the widest audience possible.
Creating an Online Resource Library
We helped our client collect and organize enormous libraries of early education content in order to create an online resource library. The library can now be accessed by educators world-wide so that everyone can explore the wealth of resources Somerville has created for best practices in early education. The resource library is filterable and searchable by curriculum categories and subcategories so that teachers can easily browse and find what interests them. And the specific city-wide guidelines are now all in one place for everyone to find.
