Garland Independent School District

The Garland (Texas) Independent School District offers their families a unique program: every family can choose any school within the district in order to best serve each student’s needs. Not surprisingly, the logistical complexities of this program, coupled with the everyday routines required to run a district with over 70 schools, had led to a sprawling and sometimes confusing site. Garland ISD needed to create clearer paths to the information users need most and ensure they could keep their content cleanly organized and up-to-date.

Ushering In a user-centered shift 

I.F. created a new site for Garland ISD that brought the most important aspects of day-to-day school operations to the surface with a new information architecture geared toward serving district families instead of internal staff. This architecture has continued to grow and evolve as Garland offers new services and seeks to answer new user needs. 

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic upended educational norms, site visits ballooned. Garland was able to use their site to continue to clearly convey information about changes in operations, new online resources, student and family support, and future plans. Through our ongoing client support and solutions services, we continued to work together to ensure that their wealth of content is evolving and organized to match the needs of their families, even in these unprecedented times. 

Success factors 

• User-centered information architecture
• Multi-layered, Drupal-driven content organization tools 
• Ongoing support for evolution and expansion
• Translation for Garland’s large Vietnamese- and Spanish-speaking populations

Awards and recognition

In 2017, the Garlandisd.net website won multiple awards from the Texas School Public Relations Association and was mentioned as one of the "10 School District Websites to Learn From."