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Disaster preparedness toolkit for nonprofits

September 30, 2009

NCG disaster preparedness toolkit header

“Cate transformed a traditional piece of sequential learning into a dynamic online experience.”

Client: Northern California Grantmakers, San Francisco

Challenges: Northern California Grantmakers was publishing an online toolkit of guidelines and checklists to help foundations prepare their facilities and grantmaking capabilities in case of a major emergency. NCG’s staff had compiled useful content, but the content needed adjustment to meet basic guidelines for website usability.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

To make the toolkit “web ready,” I provided these deliverables:

  • Website outline with an easy-to-understand name for each page
  • Homepage wireframe that designated space to describe the purpose of the toolkit and links to all of the key sections
  • Edited content with edits focused on a few kinds of changes that would make the site easier to navigate and help to optimize it for searching

I also provided content guidelines to help NCG produce more consistent, user friendly, and searchable content while keeping budgets for future website updates to a minimum.

New homepage for toolkit
Homepage of Northern California Grantmakers disaster preparedness toolkit

Live page:
NCG disaster preparedness toolkit This link goes to a different site

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Cascadia.edu website redesign

July 31, 2009

“Thank you for all you have done during this project! Your knowledge and skills, your patience and persistence, your continual search for information about effective sites, and on and on… We’ve learned a lot from you and have appreciated your commitment to quality.” —Linda Hendrickson, Cascadia Community College

Client: Cascadia Community College is a feeder school for the University of Washington. It shares its state-of-the-art, wetland-lined campus with UW Bothell. The magazine Washington Monthly named Cascadia the No. 2 community college This link goes to a different site in the United States.

Challenges: Cascadia’s old website got little traffic because users found it hard to find what they needed, even if the information did exist on the site. The site did not communicate the college’s strengths or provide much information that prospective college students commonly look for. The site was both out-of-date and hard to update.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

To plan and create Cascadia’s new website, I worked with Cascadia’s marketing and communications department and dozens of members of college staff and administration, providing these deliverables:

  • Homepage design for Cascadia.edu
  • Cascadia.edu information architecture and content migration plan
  • Content coaching, guides, and templates for content authors, including standards and guidelines for metadata and microcontent (for usability and search optimization)
  • Writing and editing for selected pages
  • Wireframes for web applications
  • Goals and audiences brief (summary of responses to a strategy questionnaire filled out during a day-long meeting with stakeholders)
  • Brand plan including audience definition, site priorities, and audience profiles (developed with Tauber-Kienan Associates)
  • Consulting on social media strategy
  • Expert evaluation of earlier proposed design

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Keyword at work

May 30, 2009

"Commitment to Sustainability" menu item at galleyecocapital.com

I worked with Lisa Galley to decide what keywords to include in page titles and navigation on the redesigned Galley Eco Capital website. Here’s an example of those keywords at work in the outside world:

Lisa’s post of May 20, 2009 This link goes to a different site, on her blog Our Green Journey, links to a post on sustainability as investment This link goes to a different site at One Block Off the Grid (1BOG).

On the 1BOG post, look for the phrase “commitment to sustainability,” which we identified as a keyword phrase during the redesign of the Galley Eco Capital site. The 1BOG post links that keyword phrase back to a page on Galley Eco Capital site titled — what else — Our Commitment to Sustainability This link goes to a different site.

This keyword loop increases traffic to Galley Eco Capital’s site, improves search results, and enhances the site’s usability (by reinforcing phrases that are relevant to the site’s audience).

» More about website strategy for Galley Eco Capital

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Editing for Cisco.com

December 1, 2008

Client: Cisco

Challenges: Optimize webpages for content usability and search.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

I edited content on Cisco.com for clarity, Cisco style, length, and usability. On selected pages, I also incorporated designated keywords to optimize for search. Topics included various networking products, Cisco services, and programs for Cisco partners.

For more details

… or to discuss your project, contact us.

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Website redesign for green real estate consultant

October 15, 2008

Client: Galley Eco Capital, San Francisco

Challenges: Old site did not describe company’s current services; site lacked keywords that would support usability and search engine optimization.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

To help the company generate more leads in a rapidly growing and shifting market, I wrote and organized new website content. First, I interviewed principal and financing expert Lisa Galley, then provided these deliverables:

  • Strategy summary Summary of goals and priorities for the site and other strategic information
  • Site outline Map showing navigation to the information and functions on the site
  • Homepage wireframe Diagram of the homepage, with space assigned to the highest-priority goals defined in the strategy summary
  • Site content Content that supported Galley Eco Capital’s strategic business priorities and followed usability guidelines for web content

New homepage

New homepage for Galley Eco Capital

Live page at:
galleyecocapital.com This link goes to a different site

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Web application for child welfare professionals

November 30, 2007

Client: Administrative Office of the Courts (State of California), San Francisco

Challenges: AOC asked me to copyedit “static text” for an online application, but little of the copy in the application met usability standards for user interfaces. The site provides resources for child welfare attorneys and social workers.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

With the client’s permission, I rewrote virtually all of the copy for the application. Key improvements included these changes:

  • Developed information architecture: Improved navigation in the application, writing navigation labels that were easy to understand and comprehensive.
  • Prioritized information: Retooled planned page layout and content so that the most-used information appeared high on each page.
  • Rewrote for maximum “information scent”: Rewrote the copy into concise, active sentences packed with keywords that orient users.
  • Made other usability recommendations: Recommended changes to meet other website usability standards. Examples: Add a “Search” label next to the search box; activate functionality with the Return key; and streamline functionality of site registration form.

Live page:
California Dependency Online Guide This link goes to a different site

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Software how-to guides for teachers

November 18, 2005

“Cate is an exceptional editor. She takes muddled drafts and transforms them into crisp pieces that communicate technical concepts in plain English. She makes language appropriate for a range of audiences. Cate immediately grasps the key concepts in a piece, even when it’s her first exposure to the subject. I’ve always felt our work was substantially better when Cate worked with us. Cate makes instructions for interactive applications accurate and easy to use.” —Kirsti Aho, Macromedia/Adobe

Client: Macromedia/Adobe Systems

Products: Contribute, Captivate, Flash, Dreamweaver

Challenges

Software how-to guide drafts were hard to follow, contained errors, and did not conform to Macromedia’s standards. Audience for these guides was college teachers.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

I edited or rewrote the guides for the following:

  • Clarity: Were the instructions hard to understand?
  • Flow: Did the instructions follow in the right order?
  • Accuracy: Did the text describe the screenshots accurately?
  • Style: Did the text follow company style for usage, format, and so on?

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Writing corporate content on banking and finance

July 30, 2005

Clients/employers: Intuit, World Savings

Challenges: Produce effective company communication with customers, job seekers, regulators, and others, on topics that can be both sensitive and complex.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

Working with teams to define business goals and user tasks, I developed information architecture and wrote usable, persuasive website content for subsites on privacy, online security, corporate philanthropy, and careers.

On all subsites, content strategy required solving problems specific to the banking and finance industry. For example, privacy issues have unique implications in the context of online banking and tax software.

For more details

… or to discuss your project, contact us.

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Content and UI writing for caregiver resource site

October 1, 2000

CaregiverZone logo

“Caregiving professionals are always looking for resources they can confidently recommend to families. Cate’s concise, clear descriptions made a great contribution to the CaregiverZone site’s credibility among my colleagues.” Dean Kidder, RN, Director of Business Development

Client: CaregiverZone, a resource site for caregivers of elderly relatives; www.caregiverzone.com

Challenges: Provide informational support for family members making important and sometimes urgent decisions about a relative’s treatment, care, or placement in an institution. Treat an emotionally sensitive topic with sensitivity while providing clear, concise information on health care, health insurance, and legal issues.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

Working with staff, outside health care experts, and usability consultants, I provided these deliverables:

  • Concise descriptions of caregiving resources in over 100 categories, from Meals on Wheels programs to Medicare rules
  • User interface copy for site registration, sign-in, and sign-out, including contextual help, error messages, and automatically generated email messages
  • Other site content, such as company information
  • A style guide for content and user interface copy

America Online introduced CaregiverZone as its caregiving portal in summer 2000. USA Today named it a “hot site” in March 2000.

For more details

… or to discuss your project, contact us.

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Content writing for chipmaker

February 1, 2000

Client: Transmeta, maker of low-power microprocessors

Challenges: Describe Crusoe microprocessor technology as part of Transmeta’s widely publicized website launch.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

I wrote content about the workings, features, benefits, and applications of Crusoe, Transmeta’s software-based microprocessor technology (trademark: Code-Morphing Software), which was designed to prolong battery life compared to conventional processors.

The website launch was moved up by 3 weeks after the company got word that AMD, a competitor, planned to launch a similar product. A Wikipedia article on Transmeta This link goes to a different site describes the public speculation about Transmeta and its website.

For more details

… or to discuss your project, contact us.

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