International Baccalaureate
The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a recognized leader in the field of international education. Founded in 1968, the IB currently works with 1,782 schools in 122 countries to develop and offer three challenging programmes to more than 200,000 students aged 3 to 19 years.
To support the needs of the teachers, the IB developed an Online Curriculum Centre to serve curriculum publications and documentation, and to facilitate interaction, online, between teachers.
In addition to the OCC, the IB has developed an application to collate publications for use at workshops—the Workshop Resource Centre.
Internationalisation
With the redesign of the OCC and WRC, there was a requirement for both sites to be more web standards compliant and to increase accessibility and usability. In addition to this, both sites would be produced in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Chinese.
The OCC Masthead. Maximum flexibility in the design as it needed to accomodate content produced in four languages.
A brand identity was also required for both sites. They were to sit within the IBO master brand, but also have their own identity. Typography, colour and grids were to be a particular consideration due to the multi-lingual aspects of the site.
User Centred Design fused with traditional Graphic Design
The project began with an in-depth consultation period with the IBO. Personas and user flows were developed, based on user research, in order to better understand the OCC and WRC audiences. The personas were used throughout the developement and design period to sense-check the design decisions we were making.
A large proportion of the project was defining content deliverables in the form of wireframing. The information architecture was completed and wireframes were based around that and a detailed content audit to ensure we could obtain a clear set of template deliverables. Then we could begin on the brand and design development.
The branding for the two sites was challenging. The IBO master brand had to be adhered to, but there was a requirement for the OCC and WRC to have their own unique identites, whilst also ‘belonging’ to each other. This particular problem was solved but a common information architecture, grid and typography but a change in colour way. This meant, in practical terms, that the structural templates (grid, type etc) could be developed for both sites and then a ‘skin’ of colour applied to each site.
OCC Dashboard for logged in user.
… and all built using Web Standards of course
Both sites validate to XHTML 1.0 Strict, and use CSS for presentation. The web standards approach to the client side build of these sites helped with the many user configurable and language options they have. In addition to four languages, there are two colourways and three different layout configurations; all of which are controlled by different stylesheets. This cuts down maintenance and increases speed for the user.
A huge variety of page types shows the flexiblity of the design solution