[Case Study]
Enhancing
Quality of
Life in
Minnesota
The MDA website is a portal to communicate important information to farmers, agricultural businesses, the general public, and employees.
[The Story]
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture
(MDA) has served the state of Minnesota for more than 125 years. The work they do touches every Minnesota citizen every day. Their mission is to enhance all Minnesotans’ quality of life by equitably ensuring the integrity of the food supply, the health of the environment, and the strength and resilience of the agricultural economy. Their three general areas of responsibility include protecting the food supply, protecting natural resources, and cultivating the agricultural economy.
THE
NEED
The MDA website is a portal to communicate important information to farmers, agricultural businesses, the general public, and employees. Internal and external feedback received from customers and stakeholders provided the business justification to support a complete redesign of the existing MDA website.
THE
SOLUTION
As demand increased for completely seamless website experiences, we reevaluated their web strategies in order to meet these expectations. Throughout the project, we worked closely with various internal stakeholders comprised of executive, technical, and division workgroup teams. The end result was a newly designed and developed website that was designed with user experience front and center. The optimized, mobile-friendly website offers a customer-centric look and feel to make it easier to locate information and perform key user tasks. The new website is responsive and compatible with modern mobile devices and web interfaces.
[The Highlights]
Roadmap & Planning.
A project plan is a roadmap for stakeholders navigating the tasks and deliverables necessary for success. Our roadmaps often begin with a GANTT chart and clearly define goals and timelines. Stakeholders involved and impacted by the project are identified and their needs defined during the initial project planning process.
[The Highlights]
Content Inventory & Audit.
MDA has a large enterprise website with thousands of web pages and file attachments in PDF form. When redesigning a website, it's imperative to audit the content to identify obsolete or inaccurate pages. We created a content inventory of the MDA site prior to the redesign so key stakeholders could identify pages that would be kept, edited and deleted. This allowed content owners a jump start to begin the process prior to the content migration to the new site.
[The Highlights]
User Experience Research.
One of the most important goals of the MDA website redesign was to improve the usability of the website so that site users could more easily find content and perform desired tasks. To this end, we conducted user experience research in order to inform and create a new information architecture and navigation. We began by identifying key site information and tasks and conducted card sorting and personal interview exercises with external audiences.
[The Highlights]
Wireframe, Prototype & Design.
Wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes are developed in order to represent the structure of information on the website and to visualize the content and demonstrate the basic functionalities in a static way. Rapid prototypes allow for first impression testing and online, collaborative review of the site mockup. Finally, high-fidelity design concepts are developed that represent the data in a visually pleasing and interactive manner.
SERVICES
PROVIDED
STRATEGY CONSULTING
USER EXPERIENCE RESEARCH
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE DESIGN
CONTENT AUDIT
WIREFRAME & PROTOTYPE
RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN
WEB DEVELOPMENT
CONTENT MIGRATION
TESTING & QA
ANALYTICS & OPTIMIZATION
WEBSITE SUPPORT
ACCESSIBILITY COMPLIANCE
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
TECHNOLOGIES
USED
DRUPAL CMS
BOOTSTRAP
HTML/CSS/JS
SOLR SEARCH
ACQUIA ENTERPRISE
[Want to Know More?]