Equal parts social networking hub, event manager and publishing engine, www.goingtobejoined.com is a unique opportunity to design for a vast and complex online tool suite.
In anticipation of their daughter’s 2009 wedding, the principals of Walker Media Group set out to find a single, comprehensive online tool-suite to manage the event. While they did find a number of dedicated resources, these sites fell short of their expectations. Some were costly. Others were too dependent on partner-sites to deliver a complete offering. None were ideal. Fueled by their frustration, Jackie Curtis and Michael Walker re-directed their energies toward piecing together the right team to build their dream site.
At the recommendation of Riordon Design, Walker Media offered us the opportunity to spearhead the new venture – to develop a communications design platform which would ensure the site's best opportunity for success. Wish list in-hand, we began to shape an organizational framework and map and test the various logic-flows inherent in the proposed site structure.
Immediately, it became clear to us that Going To Be Joined would have inherent complexities above and beyond its peers. Where most networking sites facilitate a basic publisher/viewer relationship, this site supports a number of visiting parties – including a spectrum of guest users – in a prioritized manner. Security is paramount and careful consideration is paid to issues of privacy and disclosure.
Customization is also critical to the site offering – and a clear differentiator. User’s can define the flow of communications to and from their wedding site as well as its aesthetic presentation to guest parties. This functional cornerstone dictates that our design system of over 30 unique pages does freely adapt to any number of user-selectable themes. These themes also carry through to outgoing communications – announcements, invitations and notifications – all of which were considered as part of our design deliverables.
