FEATURED CASE STUDY:
NNLM All of Us Program Center
Working with public libraries to help communities participate in biomedical research and to support the health information needs of their communities. The NNLM All of Us Program Center (NAPC) supports the NIH All of Us Research Program to engage those interested in becoming a participant and to provide value for those who are currently participating in the program. We work with public libraries to help communities participate in All of Us and to support the health information needs of their communities. We also train partners to engage with potential and current program participants.
The Challenge:
Spanning a four-year period—between April 2021 and April 2025—my full-time employment with University of Pittsburgh afforded another unique opportunity to define, design, and deploy a cohesive creative strategy for a national campaign. In support of the national All of Us Research Program, our program center was tasked with defining, building, and implementing a website that could communicate with its audience over the multi-year contract period—even if the target audience, message, and objectives were continuously evolving.
The Solution:
In hindsight, the answer to your problem is so much simpler: A + B + C = D. However, real-world solutions require a complex collection of tools and strategies in order to succeed. From project management to website infrastructure, from creative toolkits to User Experience studies, just take a moment to read about all of the issues, problems, and challenges that were ultimately lassoed in the final project and product.
Content Management Framework
As the powerhouse back-end framework for many government websites, the Drupal platform was selected for the product’s reliability, security, and ease of use. Over four years, the website migrated from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 to Drupal 10. Each iteration of product software provided a slight learning curve, modification to theme templating, and even module availability.
The one constant in web development is that of change; we believe change is fundamental in the industry, despite the inconveniences that it sometimes creates. But the improvements and advantages are always a benefit to the client’s ability to effectively communicate to their target audiences.
Prioritizing Accessibility
Government-funded projects are inherently complex, including the mandate to provide accessible materials on the web. Complex doesn’t equate to inconvenience, as we fundamentally agree with the right of every individual to access information equally. From selected Drupal modules to color palettes and contrast models, from localized multilingual content presentation to concentrated User Experience studies, our project was serious about providing a comfortable level of accessibility to all website visitors.
Hand-in-hand with accessible content, the project required creative compliance as directed by the national campaign for the All of Us Research Program. Specific brand guidelines were issued for all vendors, including our group, that outlined precise font, color, and language parameters.
Suite for Successful Project Management
As project leader on the NAPC website, we adopted a suite of management tools, including: Jira, Confluence, Slack, Trello, Canva, and Miro. Each tool—seamlessly integrated into a daily workflow—provided an opportunity to responsibly manage timelines, communicate project progress, plan website iterations, issue and track task tickets for team member completion, or to simply document the extensive process of revamping one website (multiple instances) over a four-year period.
Not all tools are suitable for every project, but intelligent project management should be a prioritized component of every project—large or small, independent or government-funded!
Adobe Creative Cloud
Quickly adopted as the standard in many industries, Creative Cloud is an invaluable suite of professional creative tools. While extensive in its offerings, the following collection has been frequently used for website design and development across the board: Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Lightroom, Dreamweaver, and XD.
Our daily heavy-hitters for the NAPC? Well, you probably already guessed them. Dreamweaver offers an intuitive interface for website development and file management. Photoshop enables the creation of important graphics and illustrations used within our project. Can you guess the sleeper app in the family? Adobe XD is an amazing tool for wireframe mock-ups and comp production when sketching creative ideas to share for management, stakeholders, or even User Experience studies!
Archived, but Not Forgotten
Interactive websites are inherently provisional, typically living a short digital lifespan; such was the case with the NAPC. Once the government contract expired, the program and public website was archived.
Interested in what the site used to look like? We have compiled a PDF with screenshots from the website, mostly for posterity and a record of effort over the years, and have provided a download link for curious people (just like you).
¿Se habla español? Or English, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Simplified Chinese
One requirement in our government contract was to present website content and materials in a minimum of two languages: English (EN) and Spanish (ES). This objective was met by implementing multilingual modules within the Drupal environment. This allowed our team to create multiple copies of the same webpage, but presented in both primary languages. While the task required much research and effort, the final version of the site was a wonderfully accessible collection of resources and trainings utilitized by many different types of audiences.
In addition, throughout various targeted initiatives, other language materials were produced and presented on the website. Image, audio, and content assets were available for several components in Korean (KO), Vietnamese (VI), Arabic (AR), and Simplified Chinese (ZH). The NAPC partnered with multiple translation vendors to provide the localized website assets.
Excerpt from the Resources Library page, displayed in English.
Excerpt from the Resources Library page, displayed in Spanish.
Do You Know? And Other Insightful Questions
The NAPC conducted a multi-session approach, spanning four months, to evaluating the effectiveness of the website interface, site structure, and content presentation of key messaging. What we really wanted to ask real-world website users was the following question: Do you know what our team does?
And while this should be an easy answer to a simple question, we discovered that users from outside of our internal staff were not fully grasping our objectives which was a huge problem. Sometimes, just sometimes, the message that you are attempting to communicate with your constituents is not exactly as clear to them as it is to you. Invest some time, effort, and expense into ensuring that your initiatives are not lost.
Mock-layouts were constructed in Adobe XD, suggesting content and layout reorganization to clarify what our team offered to our key audiences. Findings from each session were incorporated into the website environment, revising the project as we progressed through the user experience studies. This iterative process allowed NAPC to refine our website between each focus group session, thus improving the experience for the subsequent user groups.
