Responsive Web Design Podcast
Paul Gee and I describe the process for designing and building a family of websites for the twelve medical journals published by the JAMA Network.Branding
The printed journal JAMA had recently gone through a complete redesign. My job was to take the print styles and convert it to a living style guide for the web. This included imposing best practices in web typography, making sure certain colors and visual treatments were 508 compliant and accessible for screen readers. The performance of the site was critical as well so we had to deviate from the print styles on certain pieces of functionality.Users
The AMA performed an extensive contextual inquiry process in which they directly observed how their users consume information in their workflow. Silverchair applied this user research to create the architecture and features of the unified JAMA Network, including:Intuitive interface
Provides users with an interface that highlights key JAMA Network resources, including CME, Online First articles, and multimedia.Content in Context
Surfaces additionally, highly relevant articles and other resources from across all the publications in the JAMA Network and beyond.Semantic Search
Provides better results by normalizing synonyms, alternate spellings, acronyms, and jargon and by connecting closely related concepts.Integrated E-Commerce
New custom-built JAMA Network Store streamlines the purchase of subscriptions, CME, articles, and other resources.Semantic Collections
Users from all fields of medicine will find semantically generated topic collections that combine related content from across the Network.User Testing
We actually built an HTML version of those mocks that we brought back to users, and we allowed the users to sort of direct what they wanted. I say that because it did influence our editorial strategy. There were some echoes and some things that they said about the designs that we worked hard to incorporate into the original requirements and then into the revised requirements before we actually started building.The American Medical Association
JAMA
The American Medical Association (AMA), the largest association of physicians in the United States, publishes JAMA, one of the most-cited and highly regarded medical journals in the world, together with eleven specialty journals to offer enhanced access to the research, reviews, and perspectives shaping the future of medicine.
The AMA selected Silverchair to upgrade their web delivery platform and unite their journals under a new umbrella, the JAMA Network. By getting involved early in the conception of the JAMA Network, Silverchair user experience experts became active participants in shaping the vision of the new unified architecture.