ADN Cuba - is an audiovisual, social and participatory magazine with correspondents in Cuba, Spain and the United States. It was founded in 2017 with the purpose of showing Cuba’s diversity and serves as a portal and platform for video documentaries, work on LGBT issues, Human Rights, Economics, Racial Integration, and Entrepreneurship.

More than a test of “cubanidad” (rather than promoting a particular version of who is a true Cuban), it is a place of coexistence and meeting; a way to exchange questions and visions, images and sounds, with the contribution of many people who live in Cuba with the millions of Cubans in the diaspora who want to maintain a link with their home land and culture. ADN Cuba’s commitment is to stand for human rights and press freedom in Cuba.

The platform required an image makeover and the ability to adapt in order to prioritize video content over written content.Therefore a redesign and a new approach on who it looked and how it interacted with the user was necessary.

Out team implemented a discovery and prototype strategy that eventually led to user stories, wireframes, prototype and the site’s look and feel.

This website was developed in Drupal 8.
Some of the basic functionalities are:

  • Component based publishing developed using paragraphs.
  • Publication workflow to maintain a proper review and publication process.
  • Multiple layout configurations so journalists can choose the right one when publishing content.
  • Centralized and reusable media library based on roles and content types
  • 3 Different content types were created to manage content:
  1. Article - Simple news article content with 5 different components.
  2. Photo - Article - ( allows the publishing of interactive photo galleries with background audio, audio player, subtitles, all under a very detailed storyboard )
  3. Docu-Series ( Holds video series based on chapters and published under multiple categories using taxonomies)
  • Landing pages based on views with multiple, reusable and flexible layouts.
  • For every new taxonomy category, a landing page is generated automatically using views contextual filters.
  • Users landing pages are also automatically generated for each new user with a Journalist role.
  • Custom RSS feeds were created to distribute content across multiple owned and associated media platforms
  • JSON API is being used to provide an endpoint for a PWA and hybrid APP been developed on IONIC framework

Methodology

This Drupal 8 project was developed under the scrum methodology with a team of 1 UX/UI Designer, 2 Drupal Backend Developers, 1 Full Stack Drupal Developer, 1 Scrum Master, 1 Product Owner and 1 QA Specialist.