The Communication Studio LLC

Health & Safety: "Lead-Free Kids"

(1 mo.)

Merkley +Partners (also our agency client in 2008) asked us to guide their redesign this public-facing self-service health site, a partnership between the EPA and the Ad Council. We simplified the UI, spoke to the target audience (Moms), gave it a social networking edge, and focused on immediate “calls to action”. 

Corporate Template

Annotated Template

Challenges

The legacy leadfreekids site was meant to offer health and safety-oriented self-service. In practical terms, it was an uninspiring hodgepodge that failed to reach - or motivate - its target audience. In order to get to solutions, we needed to:

  • Map content and structure
  • Reorganize collateral with an eye towards practical usage
  • Focus on the Target Audience - and their needs
  • Invigorate the experience with one-click Calls to Action
  • Create a Living Community of Interest
  • Integrate Professional Solutions Partners into the mix
  • Reach across cultural, linguistic and accessibility barriers

Solutions

  • Merkley didn't ask us to brand the site - They already have excellent folks in-house to do that. We provided information architecture and content strategy: "raw" wireframes in a clickable demosite that provided a structural framework (See first image) that was appropriate to the challenge.

    View a Clickable Demosite of this Public Social Services

  • Value-Added: We also advocated for bringing the site into compliance with international Accessibility Standards, implementing Social Networking, focusing on Risk and the Family, and featuring immediate Calls to Action.
  • Merkley restructured the site on the basis of our guidelines and "skinned" it attractively (See second image). TCS delivers again: Ahead of schedule and under budget.
    View live site on the web: http://www.leadfreekids.org

Satisfaction

Mathilde Benington, GM, Media/Interactive at Merkley + Partners (07/12/2011):

"Happy birthday! Check out leadfreekids.org to see your handiwork. Section 508 compliance notwithstanding, it's really all you. Spanish translation still in progress, but if you click that link you can see the improvement. Cheers!"

Smooth, sweet, and effective. It's always a pleasure to work with a highly professional team that really "gets it".

Corporate Public Site, Information Retrieval information architecture,telecommute