Recent Work

University of Western Ontario

"The site has received many positive comments for its clarity and innovative use of multimedia characteristics, but more importantly we have seen a real uptick in visits overall. Through Academica’s leadership and facilitation, we have been able to distil our mandate into an innovative, information-rich and available forum."

Services Provided

• Proactive project management of workflow and budget.
• Quality control of all project elements in adherence to Academica Group's stringent QA standards.
• Conceptualization and development of a new user interface and information architecture
• Development of new "discovery" navigation concept utilizing extensive rich media (video/images) in a aspirational-driven interactive home page navigation option   
• Ongoing meetings and status updates throughout the project term.
• IA and UI validation research
• Work with university IT services to connect to existing services
• Shoot, edit and programming of video and programming of Flash treatments 

Brock University

Services Provided

• Proactive project management of workflow and budget.
• Quality control of all project elements in adherence to Academica Group's stringent QA standards.
• Conceptualization and development of a new visual identity
• Ongoing meetings and status updates throughout the project term.
• IA and UI validation research
• Install and customize Academica's Drupal Higher Ed CMS
• Work with university IT services to connect to existing services
• Consulting handbook developed and presented to each department and faculty in the university
• Shoot, edit and programming of Flash treatments and rich media
• Over 300 staff trained on the CMS

Confederation College

"The project involved a complete redevelopment of our website, installing the Drupal CMS platform, information architecture, user interface, training and validation research. Academica took the lead in guiding us through the process of a new information architecture resulting in a new site that has improved functionality and navigation. The site has received many positive comments, but more importantly we have seen a real uptake in visits overall.  Through Academica’s guidance and facilitation, we have moved to a true web 2.0 platform."                                                                                                

Services Provided

• Proactive project management of workflow and budget.
• Quality control of all project elements in adherence to Academica Group's stringent QA standards.
• Conceptualization and development of a new visual identity
• Ongoing meetings and status updates throughout the project term.
• IA and UI design and validation
• Install and customize Academica's Drupal Higher Ed CMS
• Work with university IT services to connect to existing services
• Train Staff on CMS

Tyndale University College

"Academica was willing to utilize open-source technologies in the software platform Drupal, which allowed us to manage the site after it was developed by them. It had the flexibility to accomplish all the goals as stated in the RFP… they brought knowledge of design, general page architecture, and overall information architecture, creating strong branding and usability foundations... at the end of the partnership, the tools and foundations that Academica created have allowed us to expand on our own, accomplishing future goals… it has been an empowering experience working with Academica."                 

Services Provided: 

Academica Group was involved with this project from the research and conceptualization phase through to development and ongoing site support. Academica Group led the project through to completion while providing a comprehensive suite of quality services:

• Proactive project management of workflow and budget.
• Quality control of all project elements in adherence to Academica Group's stringent QA standards.
• Ongoing meetings and status updates throughout the project term.
• Conceptualization and development of a professional and modern visual identity, including all art direction and graphic design.
• Content evaluation and analysis consulting.
• Information architecture and design.
• Interface design and navigation logic, including extensive accessibility testing and web page optimization on various browsers.
• Site template and theme design.
• Technical specifications.
• Complete site build on Drupal CMS platform.
• Software training for appropriate staff in use of content management tools.

• Ongoing development and maintenance as required.

National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation (NAAF)

Scope of work:
Launched in the summer of 2009, NAAF's new website is aimed at both their youth audience and their sponsors and donors who make the foundation's work possible. The new website incorporates flash, video, photo galleries, and a new job board functionality. We are also working on developing a new module to enable online applications to be submitted and processed right on the website.

Results:
The website has been redesigned to incorporate a richer colour palette, a larger amount of video, and a reorganized architecture that makes navigating the site much more user-friendly.

The new site can be seen at www.naaf.ca.