Case Study
Mid Michigan College
Mid Michigan College serves communities across central Michigan through campuses in Harrison and Mt. Pleasant, offering 100 programs and pathways including transfer programs, career programs, and allied health fields. eWay Corp partnered with Stamats Communications to build Cascade CMS templates with section-level animations, a separate mobile header design, and WCAG 2.1 level AA accessibility built into construction.
- Industry
- Higher Education
- Platform
- Cascade CMS
- Services
- Cascade Template Development + Accessibility
- Engagement
- Project-based
Client Snapshot
About Mid Michigan College
- Founded
- 1965
- Scale
- Two-campus public community college serving central Michigan with 100 programs and pathways
- Website
- www.midmich.edu
Mid Michigan College is a public community college with campuses in Harrison and Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, serving students across central Michigan since 1965. The college operates from state-of-the-art facilities with experienced faculty and counselors dedicated to helping students get the most out of every class.
Mid offers more than 100 programs and pathways. Transfer programs are designed for students intending to transfer credits to baccalaureate degree-granting institutions. Career programs provide students with the skills and related knowledge to qualify for skilled, technical, and semi-professional positions in business, industry, and the allied health fields.
The college's website is the primary recruiting and information channel for prospective students, current students, and the broader community across central Michigan.
The Challenge
Cascade templates with section animations, a mobile-specific header, and accessibility built in.
Mid Michigan College's website serves a diverse audience of prospective students, current students, and central Michigan residents engaging with the college's transfer and career programs. The college needed Cascade CMS templates that could carry the institution's brand language across the site with the visual sophistication a modern higher-education audience expects.
In 2023, eWay Corp partnered with Stamats Communications to create Cascade CMS templates for the Mid Michigan website. Stamats provided XD designs along with design guidelines and animation requests. eWay's role was to translate the design into Cascade-ready templates with the specific interactions Mid Michigan asked for.
The bar included a separate mobile header design distinct from the desktop header rather than a scaled-down derivative, animation requests integrated into the templates, and full WCAG 2.1 level AA accessibility throughout. The college wanted accessibility built in from the start rather than reviewed as a final pass.
What had to be on the page
Cascade CMS templates implementing the Stamats XD designs precisely
Section-level animations integrated per the Stamats animation requests
Different mobile header design distinct from the desktop header
Full WCAG 2.1 level AA accessibility throughout the templates
Responsive design across desktop, tablet, and mobile
Easy to manage through Cascade CMS by the college's content team
The Solution
Cascade-ready templates with animations, a separate mobile header, and accessibility built in.
After receiving the XD designs and design guidelines from Stamats, eWay built Cascade CMS templates using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The templates implement the Stamats design precisely, integrate the specific animation requests at the section level, include a separate mobile header design, and meet WCAG 2.1 level AA accessibility from construction.
Cascade-ready templates implementing the Stamats XD designs across desktop, tablet, and mobile
Section-level animations integrated per the Stamats animation specifications
Separate mobile header design distinct from the desktop header rather than a scaled-down derivative
WCAG 2.1 level AA accessibility built into every component
Responsive design across desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes
Templates delivered ready for Cascade CMS to use as the publishing foundation, manageable by the college's editorial team
Architecture
A glimpse of the stack
Application
Cascade CMS template with custom front end
Frontend
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery
Animation
Section-level animations per Stamats specifications
Accessibility
WCAG 2.1 level AA compliance built into construction
The Outcome
Cascade templates with the visual fidelity and accessibility a community college audience deserves.
Visual fidelity to the Stamats design
The Cascade template renders the Stamats XD designs precisely across the page, with section-level animations complementing the content rather than distracting from it.
Mobile-first when it needs to be
A separate mobile header design ensures the navigation and visual hierarchy work specifically for the smaller-screen experience rather than being a scaled-down version of the desktop header.
Accessible by construction
WCAG 2.1 level AA conformance is built into every component. Visitors using assistive technology, keyboard navigation, or alternative input methods can use the site as designed, which matters for a community college serving a diverse student population.
Cascade-ready hand-off
The templates were delivered ready for Cascade CMS to use as the publishing foundation. Mid Michigan's editorial team can build out the rest of the site against the templates without re-doing front-end work.
Mid Michigan College's website now runs on a Cascade-ready template that brings the visual sophistication of the Stamats design to a community college audience, with section-level animations, a mobile-specific header, and WCAG 2.1 level AA accessibility built into construction.
Common questions about this engagement
What buyers ask before engaging us on a project like Mid Michigan College
What does 'Cascade-ready template' mean?
Cascade CMS publishes site content against a template that defines the structure, layout, and interactions of every page. The template is the front end; the CMS handles authoring and publishing. eWay built the front-end template, including markup, styles, JavaScript interactions, animations, and accessibility behavior, in a form Cascade can use as the foundation for the site. After hand-off, the college's content team builds pages against the template inside Cascade without touching front-end code.
Why a different mobile header instead of a scaled-down desktop header?
Mobile and desktop are different reading environments with different navigation patterns and different attention budgets. A header designed for a 1440px desktop screen scaled down rarely produces a good mobile experience. Mid Michigan wanted a mobile header designed specifically for mobile, which the template implements as a separate component rather than a responsive derivative of the desktop pattern.
How were the animations specified and implemented?
Stamats provided animation specifications alongside the XD designs, indicating the behavior expected for each section. eWay analyzed the specifications, prototyped the animations, and implemented them in CSS and JavaScript. Animations were tuned to stay performant across devices and to respect user preferences for reduced motion.
How did Stamats and eWay work together?
Stamats led the visual identity work for Mid Michigan College, providing the brand language, the XD designs, the animation specifications, and the design guidelines. eWay was the technology partner: building the Cascade-ready template, implementing the animations, integrating the mobile header design, and meeting the WCAG 2.1 level AA accessibility bar. The two organizations operated as a paired team where Stamats owned the design and eWay owned the technical implementation.
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