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In addition to a full branding treatment, we developed a solution for students to reserve and configure when and where their items would be picked up and delivered.

An iPad point of sale interface was also developed for employees to process payment for each customer during pickup time as well as to manage all business workflow. All College Storage soon became the premier moving and storage solution for students in Western Mass.

CreativeGround is a free online directory of profiles for cultural nonprofits like libraries and theaters, creative businesses like recording studios and design agencies, and artists of all disciplines. They came to LCM looking to escape a pattern that many organizations find themselves in: the design, creation, hosting, and support of their website had been handed off multiple times between different agencies, and some things had been lost in a long game of telephone; they were in a support contract, but didn’t feel supported; they knew they needed to make some big changes to their site, but needed guidance on where to start. They needed a partner that would be both capable and transparent, and help them take their site to the next level.

Understandably, CreativeGround was wary of jumping into another agreement with yet another dev shop, so we started off slow. Through concise communication, thorough support, routine site updates, and honest recommendations over the course of several months, LCM was able to show CreativeGround that it’s possible to have an expert team of developers on their side, with all of their best interests in mind. 
 

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.

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.

To enhance the value to the community, we developed and implemented several enhancements. Our focus centered around adjustments to the logic behind the forum posts and replies. Our work included a more intuitive nesting and notification system, as well as new voting and ranking logic to better surface posts of value to community members. Effort was also dedicated to improving the pathways and user experience, guiding them to the desired conversations.

We developed and implemented an upgrade and migration path for the site with 85 modules, including 35 custom modules, to bring the site to a fully functioning Drupal 7 build. The upgrade was fully developed and its deployment was seamless. The Rainforest Alliance site went from Drupal 6 to 7 with zero downtime.

Last Call had several objectives for this project. We first needed to help the FCC team nail down some specific details about how they wanted to accomplish their goals and implement features like a “Compliance Calendar,” which would list various Compliance Laws and Policies by their Compliance due dates.

It was important to this project that the site’s content— mainly Compliance Laws— be easy to add by various contributors, and then easy to navigate by the end users. This also involved developing a publishing workflow better-suited for FCC’s needs; they wanted publishing states like “Ready for review,” and “Needs revisions,” instead of a simple “published” or “not published” system. 

Another key aspect was site filtering. Because this site was serving information for five different schools, and other various organizations, users needed to be able to filter the site specifically for their needs.
 

What I most like about working with your firm is your ability to hear what I want, really “get” it very quickly and translate into a web site or whatever.

Elizabeth J. Carmichael, Director of Compliance and Risk Management, Five Colleges Incorporated

We were hired to build a new corporate identity package including logos, branding, a slogan, and a website.

Launching later that fall, we successfully captured the spirit of the restructured department and brought forward their mission to help inventors, artists, and forward-thinkers to access patents, copyrights, protections, and most importantly, attention to their creations.

We brainstormed several ideas but landed on a theme around cooking and food. This theme is rich with metaphors about working together, each ingredient adding to the final result, and a robust menu of content for attendees. From there we started sketching layouts. It turned out that Lil NERDy looked really cute in a chef’s hat!

We tried to produce images that spoke to the metaphorical meanings of the theme. NERDys sharing food, cooking together, or adding lots of ingredients. We also created some custom images, such as the call for volunteers, and hackathon email images.

 

Remixing an existing character was a challenge, because it had to remain true to the feeling of the mascot, but also be refreshed enough that it was clear 2020 had a unique look and theme. We had to establish rules, such as the eyes always being darker than the body color, to make sure they looked cheerful and lighthearted, and hands and feet being simple shapes.
 

Another element we brought to this theme was patterned backgrounds. We illustrated foods and cooking tools, and added them behind event collateral, to add another dimension to the illustrations when used in emails and on social media. This added depth to the imagery, and consistency to event collateral.

We were able to create a library of Lil NERDys, supplemented by two patterns, that tied into the theme and were informative in the event marketing materials and collateral. NERD Summit had to make a quick pivot due to Covid-19, and was a remote event. We were still able to utilize Lil NERDy across many digital assets and bring some warmth to a then-unfamiliar new event type.

Discovery

The success of Mass.gov hinges on getting the right feedback from constituents to site authors. Our first step in overhauling the way Mass.gov collects feedback was to define what we needed to know about each page in order to improve it, so we could design the feedback component around that. It consisted of the following:

• Whether or not users found what they were looking for, and what that was.
• Contextualize the above by knowing how satisfied users are with the page, and what they came to the site to do.
• Very detailed feedback that could only be provided through their user panel, a list of nearly 500 constituents who have volunteered to test new features for the site.

With our broad goals defined, we wanted to make sure the feedback component was working on a more granular level as well. We conducted a series of interviews with site authors asking how to best reach their users, and gained some valuable insight. Here’s what they told us:

• Too much information in the feedback form would scare users away.
• Feedback was being submitted with the expectation of a response, and organizations wanted to be able to respond.
• But, not all organizations would be able to respond, so a variety of contact options needed to be available to them.

Strategy

We combined what we learned above with our best practices to make a set of requirements that we used to define a strategy. It was immediately obvious that this feedback component needed to do a lot! And like site authors told us, if we showed that to users all at once, we might scare them away.

So to maximize the amount of responses we’d get, we decided to lower the effort for submission by presenting these options one at a time, starting with the step that takes the least amount of commitment, and increasing with each step. So users can submit a little bit of feedback, and then opt into submitting a little more, and then keep going.

Designing the feedback form

With a clear strategy in place, we designed the following component.

On first load, the component is very simple — it’s only asking users if they found what they were looking for.

Once users have made a selection, the component expands with fields asking them what they were looking for.

Site authors have the option of including an alert here that tells users this form is not for urgent assistance, and directs them to a better place where they can do that.

In the above example, the organization who is responsible for this page is able to respond directly to feedback. So if users say they would like a response, a form opens up for them to enter their contact information. If the organization was not able to respond directly to feedback, a brief explanation of why would appear there instead.

 After submitting, users are thanked for their feedback. 

Seen above, organizations are given the option to link to their contact page. This is commonly used if the organization is unable to respond directly to feedback.

Users are then given the option to take a short survey, where they can provide more detailed feedback.

After submitting the survey, users are given the opportunity to join the Mass.gov user panel. This is the largest commitment available for providing feedback, so it’s at the very end!

So that’s how feedback is collected on the site. But what happens to it after that?

Displaying feedback to site authors

Feedback submitted through the site can be viewed per node, i.e. a site author can go to a specific page through the backend of the site and view all the feedback submitted for that page. But a lot of feedback can be submitted for a single page, and on top of that, site authors are often responsible for multiple or even many pages. Combing through all that feedback can be a prohibitively daunting task, or simply not possible.

To help with this, we designed the “Content that needs attention” panel for site authors.

The “Content that needs attention” panel appears on the welcome page on the backend of the site, making it one of the first things site authors see after logging in. It displays the page titles of their 10 pages with the lowest scores from users, sorted by page views. By showing site authors their content that’s seen by the most people first, we’re helping them prioritize what to work on next.

We’re giving site authors additional information about the content right in the component, helping them make decisions at a glance. In addition to the aforementioned page titles, scores, and page views, we’re showing them the content type (since some titles can be very similar on this site), the date they last revised it (in case that helps them know how badly this content needs attention), and something a little surprising… a “Snooze” button!

We put a snooze button in because once site authors make an improvement to content, it’s no longer helpful for them to see it here. So, the way it works is that they make an improvement to content, then hit “Snooze,” and it’ll disappear from this list for one month. At the end of that month, one of two things will have happened: 1) the content will have improved enough to no longer appear on this list, or 2) the content needs more improvement, and will appear back on this list.