HWP's Exploration Lab
HWP's Exploration Lab
The Labs is a space for experimentation, collaboration, and continuous improvement across the HarvardSites ecosystem. Here, HWP shares emerging ideas, pilot initiatives, and platform innovations that we are actively exploring with our community.
These efforts reflect our commitment to evolving Harvard’s web publishing environment through thoughtful governance, user feedback, accessibility, and scalable design practices.
The Labs provides a transparent look into how we test new capabilities, learn from our partners, and shape the future of sustainable, institutionally aligned web services at Harvard.
Current Projects
Here are some of the exciting initiatives HWP is working on.
AI-powered Drupal support chatbot
A HarvardSites Drupal support chatbot for 24-hour support and help.
AI Content Strategy Assistant
Review a Harvard website and get practical next steps for clearer content, navigation, IA, and readability. This pilot tool draws on HWP guidance, HUIT accessibility practices, and usability research (HarvardKey required).
AI-Assisted Accessibility Reviews
Investigating tools that help identify:
- Accessibility issues
- Content readability concerns
- Structural inconsistencies
- Metadata gaps
Governance Intelligence Tools
Exploring dashboards and automation concepts that support:
- Site inventory analysis
- Understanding how websites evolve over time
- Portfolio management
- Monitoring and managing large collections of sites
Design System Prototyping
Rapid testing of:
- New reusable components
- Interaction patterns
- Responsive templates
- Content modeling approaches
Content & Information Architecture Experiments
Researching ways AI and analytics may support:
- Content organization
- Search optimization
- Navigation refinement
- User intent analysis
Community Feedback & Research Automation
Testing methods for synthesizing:
- Survey responses
- Governance feedback
- Usability observations
- Support trends
