Mission Without Borders International (MWBI) works in six eastern European countries with some of the poorest and most marginalised in society. As well as this they have 12 further bases that help support all this work. Each of these bases is semi-autonomous, allowing their work to be focused in different regions and contexts. The challenge this provides however, is how to bring consistency to such a complex structure. Especially when this structure crosses language barriers.
Discovery
Initially, Dave worked closely with the team at MWBI to flesh out how to generate the best user experience. He met with the team in every country in order to generate a list of needs that could then inform the design. Working collaboratively with Andy from MWBI, our UX work enabled the design team at MWBI to push forward in planning a system that would work well for the majority of their varied users.
Partnering with MWBI from the design phase has enabled us to speak about how the designs would affect the development work further down the line. This collaborative approach, improved both the design and the development stages of the project, with the blend of Amperatives expertise and MWBI’s in-depth knowledge of the requirements. Together we were able to design and build a system that met the needs of all the various users, from admin roles in France to the boots on the ground in Romania.
Build
Our development team of Danish, Finn and Ben used the design-focused CMS ‘Statamic’ to build the site. Statamic gave us the flexibility to hard code changes and allows lots of customisation for a user-friendly, well-protected CMS. This customisation allowed us to provide 12 different websites from a centralised admin area. From this central CMS, the MWBI digital team control who has access to what data, and what control those users have to edit their areas of the site. In essence, developing the site this way gave us 12 for the price of one, with an easy-to-use system (happy days).
The team decided to build the system using an agile approach, breaking the work into bitesize tasks and providing regular check-in points with chances to refine requirements along the way, in order to meet the complex requirements. In turn, this has meant that we could work more closely but also more efficiently, dealing with issues that arose, and making better decisions than we would otherwise have been able to. The result of this is the project was a highly customisable solution that was significantly under budget!
