Our role
Build the data structure first. The website is what the structure makes possible.
The brief
A training academy is only as findable as its catalog.
The International Academy of Public Health trains the public health workforce across the Eastern Mediterranean Region, on behalf of Global Health Development and EMPHNET. Its offer was substantial — fields of study, multi-course programs, individual courses, and field work components, running to around 200 courses.
The website did not show that. It ran on an off-the-shelf theme with incomplete content, and courses existed as pages rather than as data. A ministry program manager looking for antimicrobial resistance training at the right level, in the right language, over the right duration had no way to find it. Neither did the donors and partners whose view of the Academy’s capacity was formed by what the site could display. The problem was not that the website looked dated. It was that the Academy’s curriculum had no structure a computer could read.
What we did
Modeled the curriculum, then built the site on top of it.
01 / Model
Established the hierarchy the Academy teaches by
Before any design work, the curriculum was modeled as data: field of knowledge → program → course → field work. Twelve fields of knowledge, from public health emergency management and antimicrobial resistance through health informatics, health economics, and One Health. Each course carried a defined record — overview, learning outcomes, curriculum, duration, delivery type, level, language, eligibility criteria, expected participants, certification, and course code.
That schema is the engagement. Everything the finished site can do — filter by field, by program, by delivery type, by level, by duration, by language — exists because the catalog was structured before it was published.
02 / Design
Designed the catalog as the interface, not as a page
The site was organized around discovery: search across fields of study, programs, and courses from the homepage, and a filtered catalog view combining field of knowledge, program, delivery type, level, duration, and language. Programs and fields of knowledge each received their own template, so a visitor can enter at any level of the hierarchy and move up or down it. The homepage leads with the counts — fields of knowledge, training programs, courses, online courses — because the scale of the offer was the thing the previous site had failed to communicate.
03 / Build
Developed the course module inside the content management system
The course management module was custom-built and integrated into the site’s CMS, giving Academy staff the ability to add and update fields, programs, and courses themselves — without a developer, and without the catalog structure degrading as it grows. Content authoring, review, and publishing were configured for non-technical staff, and the site was built responsive across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
04 / Populate
Loaded the catalog and supported it for a year
Around 200 courses were structured and uploaded against the schema, alongside content across the Academy’s institutional sections. The proposal had anticipated 90; the catalog that emerged once the Academy’s full offer was modeled was more than twice that — which is itself the argument for structuring first, since nobody had previously been able to see how much there was.
Search engine optimization, analytics, newsletter integration, and a scheduled backup regime were configured at launch, followed by a year of technical support and maintenance.
Left: the catalog filter panel — field of knowledge, program, delivery type, level, duration, and language. Right: the four-level curriculum structure underlying the catalog.
A course catalog is a data model with a homepage attached. Get the model wrong and no amount of design will make the offer findable.
ISEET solution design lead
Outcome
A catalog the Academy can grow.
The Academy’s full training offer became visible and searchable in one place — fields of knowledge, programs, and courses, filterable by the criteria a prospective participant actually uses. Staff maintain the catalog themselves through the course module, so new programs enter the structure rather than accumulating as loose pages.
The structure outlasted the website. The Academy has since rebuilt its site, and it still organizes its offer the way the 2019 model set out — fields of study, programs, courses — with the catalog now grown to fifteen fields.
200
Courses structured and published
12
Fields of knowledge modeled
4
Levels of hierarchy: field, program, course, field work
This is the earliest instance of a pattern that recurs across ISEET’s work: the structure comes first, and the interface is a consequence of it. A website has a lifespan of a few years. A content model that still holds after a rebuild is the more durable deliverable, and it is the one worth being judged on.
May – September 2019 (5 months) · launched September 2019
Custom course management module integrated into the site CMS
Field of knowledge · Program · Course · Field work
Around 200 courses across 12 fields of knowledge
One year of technical support and maintenance from delivery
Considering something similar?
If your catalog, registry, or program inventory is hard to search, the problem is usually upstream of the website.
May – September 2019 (5 months) · launched September 2019
Custom course management module integrated into the site CMS
Field of knowledge · Program · Course · Field work
Around 200 courses across 12 fields of knowledge
One year of technical support and maintenance from delivery
The platform behind this
Immunify is a product, not a bespoke build: six modules covering stock, cold chain, temperature, workforce, learning, and reporting.