Tag: drupal theming

UX + Drupal theming: A Quit Smoking Study Recruitment Portal

Posted on by Anne Dougherty
— Reading time: 2 minutes

– MY ROLES: CONTENT STRATEGIST, PROJECT MANAGER, DRUPAL DEVELOPER –

CHALLENGE

The Schroeder Institute needed a way to support their other channels and help people find and enroll in quit smoking studies.

APPROACH

The first step was to create stakeholder interview questions to get information like:

  • internal goals and objectives
  • target audiences
  • top tasks for audience members
  • desired perception of the organization
  • visual design preferences and dislikes

ORGANIZING THE SITE

I did competitive research, which confirmed the IA Schroeder’s in-house team thought would be most useful to potential study participants.

Next, I developed custom taxonomies covering:

  • study principals
  • types of studies
  • audience characteristics

These taxonomies would be the key to funneling participants to the correct studies early in the process.

DEVELOPING THE SITE

I developed the Drupal 7 site creating:

  • content types
  • fields
  • contexts and other back-end elements

These matched the needs discovered in the first phase of Rad Campaign’s waterfall project management process.

I led Rad Campaign staff through design review on wireframes and first round visual comps.

I also acted as a buffer between the in-house designer and Schroeder Institute staff. Part of my role was to translate the client’s feedback into understandable change requests for Rad Campaign’s design partner.

With desktop, tablet, and mobile comps approved, I finished back-end development and started on a custom theme.

The audience for study enrollment would need the site to work on mobile and tablet.

I started with Bootstrap to leverage its built-in mobile capabilities. This would set me up to deliver the best user experience to the site’s audience.

DELIVERABLES

As sole developer and project manager for this project, my deliverables included:

  • stakeholder interview documentation
  • competitive research analysis
  • project timeline with milestones, including internal review for deliverables due to the client
  • sitemap and navigation schema that accounted for recommendations from an SEO consultant
  • functional requirements document, which was the road map for back-end development
  • back-end Drupal customization including module installation, creation of views, contexts, taxonomies, and content types
  • graphic assets optimized for multiple platforms
  • custom SASS creating the interactive UI and custom theme based on Bootstrap

I created and delivered to Schroeder Institute staff basic training on content entry, publication, and management. I also created and delivered an advanced training on technical site management for Drupal.

IMPACT

The Schroeder Institute tobacco study enrollment portal had good SEO placement, often appearing in the top 10 results for searches via Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing.

Content Strategy + Custom Training: Monkey Helpers’ new home

Posted on by Anne Dougherty
— Reading time: 2 minutes

– My roles: Content Strategist, IA, Trainer, Front-end Developer –

Challenge

The Monkey Helpers project was already in progress when I joined Rad Campaign.

I used my skills as a content strategist and information architect to understand the organization’s needs.

It turned out that they had content needs and technical needs that hadn’t come to light yet.

Approach

Rad Campaign’s waterfall process and deliverables were unfamiliar to the stakeholders at Monkey Helpers; this meant they needed close guidance.

I evaluated the site structure Monkey Helpers’ Director of Development and Sr. Development & Communications Associate had proposed to Rad Campaign staff.

I created a site map and other artifacts to help them visualize changes I suggested to the IA.

I translated this structure into a functional requirements document. I would use this guide for back-end Drupal development, creating content types, fields, and custom Drupal views.

My dual roles as Developer and Project Manager let me guide Monkey Helpers stakeholders through the project on a 1:1 basis. This meant we could evaluate any of their changes requests faster. 

Rad Campaign was better able to manage the project’s scope, and Monkey Helpers better understood the impact of changes on cost.

Content strategy

 Content Strategy and editorial calendars also came into play for the first time for Monkey Helpers during this redesign.

Their previous content strategy gave “about us” content prime placement on the site’s homepage, creating a stale, inactive presence.

I developed a content strategy for Monkey Helpers that enabled them to highlight recent achievements. It got them to think about how to tell the organization’s story using recent events updates and more appealing evergreen content.

I also helped them develop an editorial calendar and guidance for archiving posts that were out of date.

Custom training

Drupal was a new system for the stakeholders at Monkey helpers. I created and delivered several basic and advanced site management trainings for staff responsible for site upkeep. We held these trainings in a series during the site’s development and after launch.

Deliverables

Rad Campaign’s practice at this time was to use Omega as a base for all custom Drupal themes. I used Omega to create:

  • a subtheme
  • custom deltas
  • contexts
  • views
  • callouts
  • CSS

I continued to be the primary point of contact for Monkey Helpers for maintenance during my four years at Rad Campaign. This work included:

  • Drupal core and module security updates
  • adding SSL to the site
  • implementing functionality to support year-end giving pop-up asks and training development staff on the technology
  • incorporating functionality for donations when Monkey Helpers switched eCRM providers

When Monkey Helpers engaged Rad Campaign in 2012, it was the firm’s policy to develop responsive websites as an additional-fee add-on to a contract. At the time of signing and while I was at Rad Campaign, Monkey Helpers declined to move forward with responsive site development.

Impact

Monkey Helpers staff could self-service content updates instead of being at the mercy of a web vendor.

This better positioned the organization to serve their potential clients. And it enabled them to have better control over their ability to raise funds for programmatic work.