Success Stories | Drupal Platform Modernization for East-West Center

Creating a Mobile-First User Experience with an Engaging User Interface for East-West Center

The East-West Center is a nonprofit organization that promotes better relations and understanding among the people and nations of the United States, Asia, and the Pacific.

It does so through cooperative education, leadership, and research. Their old website, however, faced challenges with the user interface as well as the user experience. There were five major challenges:

Outdated backend technology
Poor content navigation and usability
Web design was not responsive for mobile users
Complicated content and editorial controls
Accessibility issues with colors and redirections

The end objective was to create a platform that offers a responsive, intuitive user interface and user experience. A clearer information architecture and mobile-friendly interface would ensure great accessibility and user retention.

About the Customer

The East-West Center, or the Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between East and West, is an independent, public, nonprofit organization established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding among the people and nations of the United States, Asia, and the Pacific through cooperative study, research, and dialogue.

The Center serves as a resource for information and analysis on critical issues of common concern, bringing people together to exchange views, build expertise, and develop policy options. Guided by values of respect, innovation, and collaboration, the East-West Center aims to be a premier institution in the Indo-Pacific to convene, develop, and equip a network of leaders to solve challenges of common concern.

Over 60 years of serving as a US-based institution for public diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific region with international governance, staffing, students, and participants, the Center has built a worldwide network of 71,000 alumni and more than 1,100 partner organizations.

71000+
Alumni
179
Nations Engaged
1100+
Partner Organizations

The Challenge

The website exhibited six major problems for two user groups, end-users, and web admin.

Challenges for end-users:

Poor Content Discoverability

The site was loaded with information without an appropriate visual hierarchy. This negatively affected traffic as well as session time.
Confusing Navigation
The heavy nesting of navigation items and the grouping of irrelevant navigation items made it difficult for users.
Outdated Visual Style

The overall outdated user interface of the website could not engage its primary users: young people looking for educational and training opportunities.
Accessibility Issues
Issues concerning keyboard shortcuts, background and font colors, and browser functionality were making the website less accessible.

Challenges for web admin:

Undefined Publishing Workflow

In the absence of a streamlined workflow, content authoring was tedious.
Suboptimal Authoring Experience
Basic backend functionalities such as authoring, publishing, and editing content were too complex for non-tech admins.

Overall, we needed to create solutions to achieve:

Better discoverability
Information workflow
ADA compliance
Targeted market messaging
Content publishing workflow
Improved aesthetic appeal
Increased traffic and user retention

The Solution

Reimagining the entire experience for the website helped East-West Center attain the core business objectives of increased traffic and a solid web presence. Here’s how we executed the plan:

UI and UX auditing
Rendered modern designs through content architecture, wireframing, prototyping, and UI design that were in alignment with the East-West Center’s vision
Tested the website with various tools for accessibility and made the fixes accordingly
Recommended website upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 to ensure security and accessibility

The Result

Together, we were able to deliver a clean, visually appealing, easily navigable website. The new design has successfully created a smooth experience for web admin as well as end-users. We now have:

Engaging User Interface

The minimalistic approach towards the user interface design has improved the website’s readability on mobile devices as well. Bolder, brighter design elements with a variety of images of students, alumni, researchers, and visitors enjoying the East-West Center have added more character to the website.

Better Action on Pages

The website witnessed a significant increase in clicks on applications for programs. Many new topic and region pages quickly made it to top-viewed pages. More users clicked through to donate to the East-West Center than on the old site.

Improved Browsing Experience

A well-structured information architecture and navigation made browsing faster, and smoother. The audience can now find relevant information quickly. User groups such as students, professionals, and research scholars can now discover educational programs with ease, resulting in increased course enrollment and revenue.

Improved Backend Operability

The East-West Center’s web admin team is able to navigate the Drupal backend seamlessly and update content in a streamlined manner. It now has a refreshed backend editor with more editing features.

Holistic Collaborative Discovery
Streamlined Publishing Workflow
Responsive Mobile-First Approach
IA & Navigation Restructure
UI and UX Refresh
D7 to D9 Platform Migration
Testing for Optimizing Accessibility

Holistic Collaborative Discovery

Together with the East West Center’s tech and non-tech teams, we started a collaborative discovery. We discussed the following in detail:

Functions and objectives of the organization
Audience segments they cater to
Problems with the current website
Desired improvements including fonts, content workflow, and information flow
Earmarking the code that needed to be rewritten if we migrated to Drupal 9
Determined unused contrib and custom modules that could be discarded

Streamlined Publishing Workflow

Creating separate configuration settings for the admin users made the page editor efficient. It now helps tech and non-tech backend users create customized pages with ease.

We started with creating unique pages for each content type and dedicated a template to each. A single basic page content type was combined with various content kinds.

The next step was to create templates that have moveable, interactive content blocks. The backend user editor can now add or remove these blocks to reflect the essence of what the East-West Center does.

Axelerant_East_West_Center_Publishing_Workflow

Responsive Mobile-First Approach

The responsiveness of some page elements was not in place. The same elements would not function properly on mobile devices as they would on the desktop view. A major chunk of the website's users are the youth, looking for education and training opportunities. It was essential to make the website responsive not only for mobile view but also other devices.
We worked on a few things at the backend design so that every page is responsive.

Choosing the right typography
Change the page template to a modern, uncluttered style
Optimizing the images for all views

Axelerant_East_West_Center_Responsive_Design

IA & Navigation Restructure

Navigation menus need to be structured in a simplified way so that information is not stuck in program-siloes. It should also enable the users (those unfamiliar with the center’s departments) to find what they’re looking for by interest.

So, we redesigned the entire site navigation (header and footer) according to the information architecture and divided the header menus into Primary & Secondary Menus.

Social buttons such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, etc., were placed at the footer to increase engagement and followership.

Axelerant_East_West_Center_AI_and_Navigation_Restructuring

UI and UX Refresh

The placement of the logo was determined in tune with web, mobile and other user interfaces, making it persistently visible across all devices. We also standardized the location of secondary and tertiary logos.

Just like the center’s vision and mission, the visual branding needed to be clear, crisp, and inspiring. We had to ensure that the branding message conveyed intelligence, relevance, and expertise, while still keeping it aesthetically pleasing.

In short, the new design with bolder colors and logos website would make it easy for busy users to connect instantly and find useful information.

Axelerant_East_West_Center_Experience_Design

D7 to D9 Platform Migration

An upgrade from Drupal 7 to the latest version of Drupal 9 was needed for better site security and operations. So, we proceeded to D9 migration after a thorough collaborative discovery led by our Drupal team. And our job was to secure maximum data during the migration.

We documented and implemented the following for a smooth migration:

User Migration: D7 to D9 role mapping
Migrating the content types per role mapping
Migrate the existing media (files, images, videos, etc.)
Configuration migration to D9
Database migration

Axelerant_East_West_Center_Platform_Migration

Testing for Optimizing Accessibility

Through User Accessibility Testing, we found the problems that were making accessibility a problem. We used Lighthouse and Colour Contrast Analyzer as primary tools for the validation of accessibility issues. We also went on to fix these problems on the frontend:

Set background and foreground color contrast to an apt ratio
Standardized the voiceover functionality to capture the date and each component on the teaser videos
Ensured that the user is led to the right redirect while using the Tab key on the keyboard
Switched to a darker shade of red in the logo to make it stand out as a strong brand

Axelerant_East_West_Center_Accessibility_Issues

Paving the Way to Success

Team East-West Center and Axelerant have come a long way in making this project a success. With the new improved website aesthetic, EWC would be able to showcase its work to governmental agencies which can help them secure funding.

Streamlined Navigation and intuitive UI helped increase website traffic and has led to more program enrollment by students, professionals, and research scholars. The website now enables busy decision-makers to find usable information and connections easily.

Modernizing East-West Center’s Platform For Effective User Engagement