Release 2: The next phase of Emily Carr’s dynamic new website

Emily Carr University of Art + Design is pleased to announce the second phase of its new website design, Release 2. The project has been a collaboration of an internal website committee and LiFT Studios.

The revamped website has been warmly received since being launched in May, 2009. Haig Armen, Creative Director of LiFT Studios, (and Interactive Design sessional instructor at Emily Carr) said he and his crew wanted to develop the information-sharing potential of the website with the second release.

“We wanted to open the doors for anybody with a login to show their work and communicate with other people. Essentially, we want to knock down the walls between classes,” says Armen.

This next phase of the site encourages more user-generated content from staff, faculty, student and alumni communities in the ‘People’ section. Users are provided with a profile page where they will be able to post a bio, showcase their work, and link to other social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  In addition, the site has been redesigned to make it easier to navigate between people, work and courses so that users get a more holistic and robust view of the University.

In January, a ‘Groups’ feature will be launched within the People section, where logged-in users will be able to create groups, share group-related media, and create discussions and events. Both public and private groups will be possible, and this will provide a dynamic way for those within the Emily Carr community to connect, communicate and collaborate with others. 

Armen said a focus group, comprising students of all levels, has been actively involved in the planning of the website, including the development of the latest phase. “Our goal was to come up with a design that reflects the vibrancy of the Emily Carr community, and which allows for enhanced community building, collaboration and communication in new and exciting ways. I think we’ve done that and I think everybody will be suitably impressed.”

Release 2 will continue to use Drupal, a popular Open Source content management system (CMS). The new release, a complete site rebuild utilizing Drupal 6, replaces the existing Drupal 4. David Ayre, Emily Carr’s Coordinator of Information Applications, worked closely with LiFT to help translate their design into a functional system. 

“No other CMS would allow us to realize LiFT’s vision for the site in such a short period of time,” says Ayre. “Working with Drupal 6 has been a great experience. It has an extremely large and supportive developer community which has allowed us to easily add advanced features for collaboration, communications, media and content management.”

What do you think of the new design?  We welcome comments and feedback on the design and our future plans for the site.