White Whale Web Services was hired to redesign the Web site of Haverford College in the late summer of this year (2006).
Since then, we have come to know Haverford as a very special, very intimate and very process-oriented place. We know— based on our increasingly varied experience in the field of higher education Web design— that we can make Haverford's Web site look great, function beautifully, "add value." In approaching this project, we chose to emphasize process over outcome. The Residency is at the heart of this site development process.
Typically the process of Web site design begins with a lot of meetings: our staff and the client’s staff get together and pore over documents, plan site navigation, sketch specs for data applications, and so on. Although a lot of people can have input, most of the process goes on behind closed doors; we huddle up with the communications department and nine months later, out comes a Web site. Certainly good work can come from a conventional process like this; however, we think Haverford’s unique environment calls for a different approach.
So for a week, we're relocating White Whale to the main green of Haverford College, where our staff will work on the initial planning and strategy of the Haverford site in an open forum. Anyone who's interested can get a one-on-one meeting with the site's designers, writers and programmers. Our goal is to open our minds to a wide variety of approaches, to set aside any preconceptions we might have about how to design a college Web site, and simply listen.
We are also expecting to have fun.