Exploring Connections between the US and Asia

Established and funded by the United States government and additional support by private parties, the East-West Center's Asia Matters for America initiative is an interactive resource for students, government officials, policy makers, and journalists to discover credible and unbiased information, analysis, and news on US-Asia relations. The primary goal of the AMA initiative is to show the multiplicity of political, economic, and cultural connections between US and Asia, and to encourage people to exchange opinions, build expertise, and develop policies that make a difference. Schema was brought on to design and build a modern and responsive website that is capable of hosting a variety media types including interactive data, images, videos, documents, tweets.

Process

Working closely with the East-West Center, Schema started the design process by identifying existing pain points related to managing the content, visual identity, and user experience. To address those issues, Schema proposed a design and content strategy that would standardize the way content is presented across sections, emphasize multiplicity of regions as a central visual element, and streamline they way users would navigate the site. As part of the strategy Schema proposed to position data visualization as an integral and seamless part of the user experience. Once the design was complete, we started building the website and helping the client migrate content and data from the old website. In the process, we continuously collected feedback from the client and made improvements to make sure the website would be capable of meeting both the editors’ end-users’ needs.

Outcome

Asia Matters for America is a modern data-driven experience that feels like both an archive and and a publication. It serves as a one-stop shop for expert and novice users to discover data, analysis, and news about US-Asia relations. View the website.