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Branding Computational Cardiology.

Processes
  • Agile/Scrum
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Colin Panetta

Telling the story of the personal virtual heart.

Last Call Media partnered with the Computational Cardiology Lab at the Institute for Computational Medicine at Johns Hopkins University to establish a unique and approachable identity and website design for their very technical work. This work was completed in only two design sprints.

The Trayanova Lab of Computational Cardiology represented a rare intersection of art and science.

Discovery

During discovery, which consisted of an extensive on-site meeting, we learned a few important facts about Computational Cardiology that served as guiding lights for the design work we did with them. First, we learned about what they do. In a nutshell, Computational Cardiology creates virtual models of hearts that can be used for diagnosis or study. (Saving everyone the messy business of taking real hearts out of people’s bodies which can be, let’s say, not particularly healthy for the subject.) Here’s an Endgadget article about one of their recent studies.

Computational Cardiology uses design as a tool to set themselves apart from their peers and get attention drawn to their important work.

Our second big takeaway from discovery is that Computational Cardiology places a high value on design, a quality they told us can be rare in the scientific community. As such, Computational Cardiology uses design as a tool to set themselves apart from their peers and get attention drawn to their important work. And beyond just good design, they wanted a distinctive, exciting look. The leadership at Computational Cardiology has a keen eye for art and fashion, and they felt it was important that this sensibility be reflected in their identity. This was music to our ears!

Getting alignment

With all this in mind, we developed a few aesthetic directions that we could use to get creative alignment. These directions mostly represented Computational Cardiology’s identity using the bold, artistic direction they expressed to us, along with some more conservative elements to make sure a full range of choices was available for consideration. After quickly responding to some of the bolder directions, we selected the elements we thought worked especially well and went to work developing a unified direction based around them.

Three aesthetic directions designed for this project.
The three initial aesthetic directions we mapped out for this project.

Our work has heart

One of those elements was a graphite illustration of Computational Cardiology’s computer models of hearts. That drawing would go through multiple iterations before taking the final form seen on the site, all of which can be seen below.

Three early iterations of the heart illustration used in the site design.
Evolution of a heart.

Designing a logo

Our Creative Director Nolan was able to quickly design a thematically dense logo in a very short amount of time. The heart icon, rendered with angles to reinforce the theme of technology, is surrounded by brackets, indicating that the heart is made of computer code. Those brackets also represent the two “C”s of Computational Cardiology and the negative space between them creates a cross, a symbol commonly used to indicate healthcare.

The final logo design for this project.

Building the site

Throughout the design process we remained aware that Computational Cardiology would be building the site themselves, and frequently checked in with their in-house developer to make sure we weren’t designing anything that would be problematic for them. After the designs were complete we provided them with the assets they’d need to build the site, which they did using the service Webflow. That the final, developed version of the site (which can be seen here) is so faithful to our designs is a testament to both their developer’s skill and the robust functionality of Webflow!

Driven by the need to have a compelling presence in place for the year-end graduate student application season, Last Call Media worked within a tight timeline to design a new logo and a distinctive and approachable visual experience that showcases the lab’s groundbreaking work with illustrations that were drawn by hand in-house. The project completed in two agile design sprints.

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Healthy U Portal app.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Kelly Albrecht
  • Art Director
    Colin Panetta

Cooley-Dickinson Hospital offers an incentive-based healthy lifestyle program to their employees. As employees participate in exercise activities, healthier eating habits, and education classes to learn life-enhancing techniques, they gain points— which translate to greater discounts to their benefits contributions. CDH was tracking this participation program on paper and in Excel for over 1000 employees. Last Call was hired to transform the program into an interactive digital experience to increase participation and automate much of the workflow of managing the program.

We provided an easy-to-use interface to minimize the barrier of entry for users. Maximized by a Mobile First approach, we condensed how much information was presented to allow users to quickly access the main features of the program, which included entering exercise activity. While also accessible through desktop and laptop computers, the primary use case for the app was on the go, from a mobile device, for a user to track their progress. LCM went further, implementing QR Code functionality, allowing CDH to post flyers notifying staff of special activities. Scanning the QR Codes on those notices would transition the user’s experience to the relevant area of the app.

Things went really well with the program, it met all of our needs really well and the employees loved it.

Sam Blasiak, Cooley Dickinson Hospital

The program has been met with amazing reception both from administration, and employee participation. The program is being further expanded and developed to be modular and rapidly deployed at partner healthcare facility partners.

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Getting FITiST fit to startup.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Kelly Albrecht

FITiST is a fitness and lifestyle business that sells a single membership valid at all gyms in a city. The database needed to compile a schedule of all FiTiST-affiliated classes, provide tokens for customer registration, and charge a recurring fee for the membership.

We developed an eCommerce solution that compiles classes from from FITiST-connected gyms into a member-facing scheduling interface, as well as a recurring token payment system to handle class registration purchases.

FITiST became a success in NYC and soon expanded its operation to LA with plans for five more cities to follow.

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Redesign and upgrade for Dr.G.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Kelly Albrecht
  • Senior Development
    Tom Fleming

An upgrade to increased conversions, better sales, and more flexibility.

Competitive Advantage was experiencing a decline in their online sales. Their existing website was outdated and originally built as hundreds of static HTML pages, some inconsistent with the others. Additionally, the main site was originally laid over top of an aging proprietary eCommerce solution that wasn’t serving their needs or their customers well.

We worked with Competitive Advantage to update the design of their website, port it to the most current version of Drupal, and migrate away from their former eCommerce system to Commerce. Improvements to the checkout workflow were implemented, product images were updated, and full content control was given to Competitive Advantage to maintain product copy.

Three iphones show the Competitive Advantage homepage on mobile.

Since the transition, Competitive Advantage has seen their eCommerce sales far exceed their expectations and more than double in volume from their previous site.

We truly appreciate everything you have done for us.

Dr. Alan Goldberg, Sports Performance Consultant
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Helping patients learn more about their options for medical professionals.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership

Helping patients identify and connect with a medical professional best suited for their needs.

A key component of the web presence for Columbia Medical School is their faculty profiles. In keeping with their tripartite mission of teaching, research, and clinical work, the University displays two distinctly different types of profiles. Department web site profiles focus on the individual’s scholarly work and administrative positions. The ColumbiaDoctors website displays information about the physician’s clinical work including specialties, practice locations, and insurance. It is also just as important for new medical professionals to store and access their profile information in one place as it is for the departments and practices they are a part of. 

Maintaining a complex system with many data feeds and manual verification of information was becoming a burden for the University’s support staff, and the complexity of the process to create or update a profile was vexing to faculty and their support staff. Columbia University Medical Center looked to LCM to help them find a new solution. There was a preference for moving to an existing solution available in the marketplace rather than building a new custom solution. 

We embarked on an intensive information gathering phase, to better understand the existing technology, data inputs and outputs, and nature of the support queue. Through preparing user stories, we worked with the University to identify stakeholders groups, and we conducted detailed interviews with individuals in each group to understand their pain points within the existing system.

Finally, we conducted extensive research to identify potential solutions. We identified a number of peer institutions and investigated the faculty and physician profiles, and - to the extent possible - the technologies and workflows employed to create them. We contacted a number of vendors to gather more detailed information and winnowed the list of candidates to those that presented the best possible fit. We summarized our findings recommendations in our final meeting with the team.

By working closely with the team and developing a strong rapport with them, as well as the stakeholders, we were able to gain a clear understanding of their goals and deliver actionable recommendations 
 

By working closely with the team and developing a strong rapport with them, as well as the stakeholders, we were able to gain a clear understanding of their goals and deliver actionable recommendations to support CUMC’s business goals.