Based on our ongoing successes in building and supporting its parent IranTracker.org project, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) re-engaged us to swiftly deliver an important request: We need to publish the latest developments -- with detailed analyses -- related to national security issues.
With this kind of a resource -- accessible at CriticalThreats.org -- thereby serving as a central hub of information, Americans may be better informed about the challenges facing our country.
We knew this would be a mission-critical site, so we worked closely with AEI to understand the sensitivities and opportunities involved in the project. Following those early discussions, we then jumped into planning, visual design, and developing the platform necessary to support data input and -- in an interactive, engaging way -- the display of hot spots across the globe.
We designed the map on the homepage using relevant icons to instantly convey a visual understanding of the threat; users can then click to get additional context and analyses to facilitate understanding.
To enable more dynamic content population, we integrated IranTracker.org -- a child-site supported seamlessly by the same Drupal platform that powers the main site, as well. Users who discover Iran-related stories pertinent to them (which are streamed via RSS (Feed API)) are, upon click, taken to the IranTracker.org website to continue reading the full story. In this way, www.CriticalThreats.org is serving as a gateway to a massive amount of existing content spanning several additional separate websites -- all of which AEI and our team will work to connect for users.
