An Engaging New Refresh for an Award-Winning Library

Evolving Web worked with Georgia Tech to improve the Library website search experience, give the design a visual overhaul and upgrade the underlying Drupal CMS. We did all this without a full rebuild or migration, keeping the existing content, functionality, and information architecture in place. 

The new bento box-style search mechanism subdivides search results into different groups to give users access to the most relevant information at their fingertips. Improvements to the navigation highlight instructional content and services that are central to how staff, students, and the larger community interact with the Library. The visual identity has also been revamped to give the Library a fresh look and feel that is an extension of the Georgia Tech brand. 
 

The Georgia Tech Library is an academic library system that serves the needs of the students, faculty and staff of the Georgia Institute of Technology. The Georgia Tech Library is primarily a digital-first organization, 80% electronic and 20% physical. Their customers rely on our electronic resources most heavily, averaging more than five million downloads a year from more than 35,000 journals covering virtually every conceivable topic of scholarship.  It has been awarded the Excellence in Academic Libraries Award for integration of digital technology and renewed focus on the studying needs of students. 

Aside from the need to upgrade the underlying Drupal CMS, the Georgia Tech Library needed better search functionality in light of its expanding range of public classes, lectures and workshops. Visually, the library’s site had not been updated since before its recent renovations and the existing site did not capture the beauty and dynamism of this increasingly modern and eclectic library system. There was a threefold need for site migration, improved functionality and a fresh brand identity, while preserving the existing content and making updates without interrupting the services and content provided to end-users.

There were several technical and user experience challenges inherent in this project. These stemmed from the fact that we were upgrading an existing site and adding new components to it as opposed to building an entirely new site from scratch.

The project produced a new visual design for the Drupal-based website with vastly improved search functionality, integrations with campus-wide services, and user experience improvements for both content editors and end-users. The Drupal upgrade was accomplished early on in the project, and development was aligned with the University’s secure network and deployment workflows.

Our work included:

• Improved homepage user experience that brings in dynamic content and curated messaging
• A bento box search mechanism integrated on the homepage that searches across multiple channels to help users seamlessly discover both on-site and external content
• Streamlined pages for instruction, public programming and service management to help the Georgia Tech community discover what the Library offers beyond its catalogs and collections
• A honeycomb-themed visual pattern throughout the site that suggests community and collaboration
• Prominent use of brand primary colours, as well as bright tertiary colours used to create differentiation between the many filter categories and topic areas 
• Extensive use of photography that highlights the library’s new facilities
• Integration with Mercury, the campus-wide events calendar, to pull in Library events
• Creating custom components to display dynamic content like events calendars
• Testing accessibility of new content components
• Ease of editing for the numerous staff members involved in updating content while also maintaining site stability, allowing staff to quickly update and duplicate pages
• Deploying the website within the library university’s secure network, with custom automated developmental workflow to speed up back-end processes

The new Georgia Tech Library website is fresh and modern, providing  major usability improvements without a major overhaul of content. The improved integrations with search and events make content more accessible for staff, students, and faculty.

The new bento box-style search now subdivides search results into different groups according to type of media and related tools and services, a significant improvement over the previous site. The result of this project is a visually striking site that gives library users much faster access to external resources and efficiently connects them with services.