Oxford Scholarship Online is a publications Web site created by Oxford University Press (OUP). Organized by discipline and fully searchable, the site includes the complete text of more than 700 monographs with hundreds more added each year.

Before committing to this endeavor, OUP asked us to help determine its feasibility. Working from OUP's initial concept, our information architecture and design team created a click-through prototype that OUP could use to gauge the interest of the scholarly community.

The success of the prototype lead to a more intensive information architecture phase in which we developed a design-neutral “wireframe” model that showed user paths through the site. We tested this model with students and professors and used their feedback to refine the site’s organization, search, and browse processes, and other features. At the same time, we helped analyze the site’s subscription models to help define a workable, efficient access-control system for the site.

Throughout the implementation phase of the project we consulted regularly with Oxford’s technical vendor to ensure a successful launch of the site.