This slidecast shows part of the work I did for Cascadia. For an overview of that project, see Cascadia.edu website redesign.
All Entries in
information architecture
Disaster preparedness toolkit for nonprofits
“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
Live page:
NCG disaster preparedness toolkit 
Cascadia.edu website redesign
“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 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 The site was both out-of-date and hard to update.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
Website redesign for green real estate consultant
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
Live page at:
galleyecocapital.com
Targeting multiple audiences on a homepage
I’ve been looking at a lot of college websites while I’ve been working on a redesign for Cascadia Community College. Since a community college provides a lower level of education, you might think its website would be simpler. But no-o-o-o.
Community colleges have more audiences than 4-year colleges: not just college students but students who will go on to 4-year colleges and students who won’t; people who want PowerPoint classes and yoga classes; businesses that want employee training; ESL students; people who want a high school diploma; etc. Working on the Cascadia website, we found this beautiful site we all wanted to emulate, for Santa Clara University, but it just wouldn’t have worked for us. The homepage does a great job of blasting messages at one particular audience — see the main area with the message and gorgeous photo (on the live site, both change every few seconds):
Santa Clara University homepage
Live page at:
www.scu.edu
The homepage provides all the categories of information that this audience needs — see the discreet little columns of links below the photo.
But you couldn’t use a layout like this to communicate with college students at the same time you were trying to reach business owners and people who want to learn ballroom dancing.
For an example of a homepage that targets multiple audiences, see Homepage design for Cascadia.edu.
Writing corporate content on banking and finance
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.
Employee signup for stock purchase plan
Employer: Intuit, Mountain View, California
Challenges: Design an intranet application to replace the paper form used for employee stock purchase plan signup and changes. Putting the functionality online changed the process for the staff processing the changes, as well as for employee users. Because an employee might incur financial risk by using the application, help text had to be carefully worded.
Dutchgirl’s solutions
I wrote user interface copy for several different user scenarios based on business requirements of the company’s stock plan. Here are the deliverables I produced:
- Application flow: Flowchart for each user scenario: new signup, changes to contribution during or after open enrollment, withdrawal from the plan, and several others.
- Interface copy and help: Series of screens for login and for each user scenario, including instructions to the engineers for dynamic text. A chart of error messages mapped to issues. Context-sensitive help about ESPP paycheck contributions and the rules of the plan.
- Emails: Messages automatically generated by the system to send employees confirmation of changes they had made in the application, including instructions to engineers for dynamic text.
Content strategy for design portfolio
Client: Aaron Marcus and Associates, user interface design; www.amanda.com
Challenges: Develop a model for a portfolio of work by a user interface design firm.
Dutchgirl’s solutions
I provided architecture and content for one portfolio entry that served as a model implemented by AM+A. The model included a summary and basic details about each project and accommodated animated screenshots of key functionality.
For more details
… or to discuss your project, contact us.
Website redesign for educational products company
Client: Lightspan Partnership
Challenges: Present a complex line of educational products and services for K-12 students and teachers.
Dutchgirl’s solutions
I developed all content for Lightspan’s new site, including:
- Descriptions of products and services targeted at teachers and administrators
- Promotional headlines and copy
- Corporate content
- Page layout and contextual links
- Consulting on site architecture and navigation
For more details
… or to discuss your project, contact us.
Website for the Internet Archive
The Internet Archive, at archive.org, has been making copies of the Web since 1996. It’s a free library of virtually all publicly available sites on the web.
In 1999 the Internet Archive asked me to develop a new site that would communicate the Archive’s mission for the public good and serve as a resource on privacy, copyright, and other complex legal issues.
Here are before-and-after links to archive.org (courtesy of the Archive’s own Wayback Machine):
Before: Archive.org in October 1999
After: In April 2000
