The European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) is an association of clinicians, researchers and allied health professionals, dedicated to improving the health of people affected by allergic diseases.
EAACI, which has over 12,000 members from 124 countries and over 50 National Allergy Societies, is the leading authority on allergy in Europe.
Their mission is to provide the most efficient platform for scientific communication and education in the field of allergy and immunology.
EAACI
Flexible, scalable CMS
Simplified information architecture
Custom cross-platform search
Over the past year EAACI has been shifting towards a hybrid format in which its members and stakeholders can interact both online and offline seamlessly. After they identified the need to shift towards this hybrid format, EAACI partnered with Studio Vi to come up with a forward-thinking digital brand strategy with the appropriate identity and digital products. We helped them to redefine their brand story, followed by a Digital UX Strategy which we implemented into their overall digital proposition: The EAACI website and a new platform to share (scientific) resources called The EAACI Knowledge Hub.
We redesigned the EAACI website, not only giving it a new look, but completely restructuring it. While the focus here was to tell a story about who EAACI is as an organisation and share information about upcoming events, all information about scientific resources has migrated/moved to the Knowledge Hub website.
In addition to the website, we created a new platform: The EAACI Knowledge Hub. This is a place to learn about the latest developments in the fields of allergy, asthma and immunology, as well as exchange with experts. While the Knowledge Hub primarily serves the purpose of sharing scientific resources with clinicians and researchers, it also provides space to connect and exchange with other experts in the field. Thus, resulting in a community-built network for medical professionals to share, learn and stay up to date with the latest development in their medical fields.
Studio Vi organised a Brand Identity Workshop for EAACI to understand who they are as a brand, what they represent and how they can better position themselves in the market. While this process focuses on EAACI as a brand and its vision and mission, we did user research to find out what users think and feel. From this, we learned that users value access to research and the opportunity to interact with other members through events. We also learned that many find navigation inconvenient and want search functionality. With insights from the workshop and user research, we created a Digital Strategy that guided us through the design process, but will also support EAACI with their everyday work.
In recent years, EAACI has grown into a platform that is widely used in its field of expertise. While users valued access to search and the opportunity to interact with other members through events, they often struggled to find the right content on sites and wanted improved navigation and search capability. We conducted an information architecture workshop with EAACI to determine the best framework that would work with all the content they wanted to offer on both sites and make the most sense for future users. We then iteratively built the wireframes so we could communicate with EAACI to get feedback.
In the visual design phase, we build on top of the existing brand identity, using EAACI blue and yellow as primary colours. We used blue for the resource icons in KH, as it represents trustworthiness, and yellow for the patient and website icons, as it represents curiosity. With the new navigation, the ability to search both sites and the minimal look and feel, both sites offer a much better experience for users.
EAACI had reached a point of content saturation with their website. It had grown beyond its structure and design. Studio Vi was tasked with creating an organised, intuitive and scalable content infrastructure. We chose to build 2 websites; the EAACI website and The Knowledge hub. These two websites needed to be able to communicate with each other and fit a consistent structure and framework. For this, we used a lightweight backend with a custom front-end solution. This solution ensured performance, consistency, scalability and an intuitive and easy way for EAACI to manage their content internally. We developed a custom search plugin using a REST API. This plugin has the flexibility to adjust search result scoring based on user input, constantly evolving and improving its effectiveness.
After redefining the brand story and conducting user research, we were able to create a digital strategy that is aligned with the direction EAACI wants to go. With the new structure, navigation options and search capability on both sites, we were able to offer a much better experience for users, which is also scalable for future expansions. This solution ensures performance, consistency, scalability and an intuitive and easy way for EAACI to manage their content internally.
“Studio Vi is one of the best suppliers I have worked with in the past 10 years”
