Overview

Meredith Publishing Group worked with Cantina to apply responsive design principles to Parents magazine’s digital presence, including its site, mobile presence, and BabyNames application.

Cantina played a consulting role in this process, providing strategic insight, training, best practices and help with vendor management.

Challenge

Meredith’s in-house development team was already knowledgeable about responsive design, and their goals for this project. They needed a consulting partner to work with them on specific issues, and developing broader strategies.

Their challenges included:

1. Combining Parent magazine’s desktop browser site and mobile initiatives.
2. Updating the on-site, integrated applications with sophisticated user experiences.
3. Explaining and selling the responsive design project internally to Meredith constituencies.
4. Filling in gaps in in-house technical knowledge.
5. Update SEO best practices to responsive design principles.

Solution

Cantina worked onsite, and in weekly reviews with all the constituents of the Parents magazine responsive redesign project to develop strategies, recommendations, pattern libraries, and wireframes.

Areas covered include:

1. Discussion and education in the principles of responsive design.
2. Specified best practices for responsive design including media queries, typography guides, and grids.
3. Worked with the dev team to optimize the site and content for mobile performance.
4. Wrestled with issues surrounding advertising in responsive design.
5. Developed and discussed responsive design pattern libraries to support contractors.

Results

The client has been delighted with Cantina’s commitment to doing whatever was needed to implement responsive design principles for Meredith’s Parent magazine. The Meredith development team was able to validate their approach with the business owners and other constituents.

This already capable team added to their skill set knowledge to address specific responsive design technical issues, and they gained insights into managing the many different vendors and technologies needed to make their project a success. At the conclusion of the consulting engagement, they had in hand an optimized strategy for the implementation of the responsively-designed site to replace their current desktop and mobile apps.