The 7 Closet: A022 Digital Blog

The coolest stuff from the internet? Nah, but we're glad you think so.

People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.

—

Steve Jobs

(we use Keynote sometimes… does that count?)

This morning, one of our favorite clients launched a great new website and product that we’ve worked on for much of the past year. Learning Ally is a non-profit based in Princeton, NJ which enables visualy impaired or learning disabled students at all levels to excel through the use of audiobooks. With a library of over 70,000 recorded books spanning from advanced chemistry textbooks to Harry Potter, Learning Ally has been recording audibooks with volunteers since the reel-to-reel era of 1948. A lot has changed in technology since then and Learning Ally has evolved along the way to continue delivering up-do-date formats, and this new site launch is part of the latest push forward. We were fortnate to be a part of the team that has turned whiteboard sessions of ideas into the great new interface that debuted this morning. The site you see when you first visit is only one piece of what is actually happening - the whole picture includes the logged-out user’s expereince, a completely separate logged-in user web app, a new set of tools for teachers to manage audiobook usage in their classroom, iOS apps, desktop apps and a number of layers to tie it all together. What We Have Been Up To This whole project started with logged-in users - when we first started, our role was to document, define, scope and fine-tune the requirements for the transactional experience. Managing user account data, delivering audiobook file downloads, searching/browsing a massive book catalog and organizing a user’s bookshelf of selected titles were the highlights of what needed to be reimagined and with wide-ranging input across the Learning Ally team, we were able to create a plan for users that would dramatically improve their experience on the site. Ending up with nearly 100 pages of plans, features and user roles, we ended the planning phase with a great roadmap to guide the construction process. From there, we handed off the logged-in expereince to some of the other development parters on the project while we shifted focus to the general site visitor. Using WordPress as the base CMS, we stepped from the business/planning side of things into the technical/development world. Since the new site is divided into 4 primary sections, each focused on a major audience in the Learning Ally family that is then subdivided into various sections for sales funnels, resource information and general advocacy, the primary challenge was organizing the data in a way that made it easy to undertand not only for visitors but for site editors as well. Additionally, this was our first project in which BVI user accessibility was a primary concern - we’ve alsways tried to employ best practices, but since one of the primary user groups of the site will be visually impared, it was critical to get it right. Luckily, we had the great team at Ample to handle most of the UI considerations while we got to focus on the back-end functionality. In the end, this has been an adventurous project during which Andrew pretty much lived in a hotel and we got to dive into a waide array of topics including bibliographic data organization, BVI web navigation, SOLR query writing, and the integration of WordPress with a myriad of other systems.  This project has been a great experience and we love working with non-profits who represent great causes. We are super stoked to see the success of the launch today and are already diving into the next great batch of features for the Learning Ally site. In the meantime, go check it out. Special thanks to everyone on the Learning Ally team who made this all happen and those partners who directly contributed to making us successful, specifically: Ample, Meredith LaBrie and Priceline.

This morning, one of our favorite clients launched a great new website and product that we’ve worked on for much of the past year. Learning Ally is a non-profit based in Princeton, NJ which enables visualy impaired or learning disabled students at all levels to excel through the use of audiobooks. With a library of over 70,000 recorded books spanning from advanced chemistry textbooks to Harry Potter, Learning Ally has been recording audibooks with volunteers since the reel-to-reel era of 1948.

A lot has changed in technology since then and Learning Ally has evolved along the way to continue delivering up-do-date formats, and this new site launch is part of the latest push forward.

We were fortnate to be a part of the team that has turned whiteboard sessions of ideas into the great new interface that debuted this morning. The site you see when you first visit is only one piece of what is actually happening - the whole picture includes the logged-out user’s expereince, a completely separate logged-in user web app, a new set of tools for teachers to manage audiobook usage in their classroom, iOS apps, desktop apps and a number of layers to tie it all together.

What We Have Been Up To

This whole project started with logged-in users - when we first started, our role was to document, define, scope and fine-tune the requirements for the transactional experience. Managing user account data, delivering audiobook file downloads, searching/browsing a massive book catalog and organizing a user’s bookshelf of selected titles were the highlights of what needed to be reimagined and with wide-ranging input across the Learning Ally team, we were able to create a plan for users that would dramatically improve their experience on the site. Ending up with nearly 100 pages of plans, features and user roles, we ended the planning phase with a great roadmap to guide the construction process.

From there, we handed off the logged-in expereince to some of the other development parters on the project while we shifted focus to the general site visitor. Using WordPress as the base CMS, we stepped from the business/planning side of things into the technical/development world. Since the new site is divided into 4 primary sections, each focused on a major audience in the Learning Ally family that is then subdivided into various sections for sales funnels, resource information and general advocacy, the primary challenge was organizing the data in a way that made it easy to undertand not only for visitors but for site editors as well. Additionally, this was our first project in which BVI user accessibility was a primary concern - we’ve alsways tried to employ best practices, but since one of the primary user groups of the site will be visually impared, it was critical to get it right. Luckily, we had the great team at Ample to handle most of the UI considerations while we got to focus on the back-end functionality.

In the end, this has been an adventurous project during which Andrew pretty much lived in a hotel and we got to dive into a waide array of topics including bibliographic data organization, BVI web navigation, SOLR query writing, and the integration of WordPress with a myriad of other systems.  This project has been a great experience and we love working with non-profits who represent great causes. We are super stoked to see the success of the launch today and are already diving into the next great batch of features for the Learning Ally site. In the meantime, go check it out.

Special thanks to everyone on the Learning Ally team who made this all happen and those partners who directly contributed to making us successful, specifically: Ample, Meredith LaBrie and Priceline.

acafourek: Workin’ and campin’ in Turkey with @nicktrusty (Taken with Instagram at Dalyan Camping)

acafourek:

Workin’ and campin’ in Turkey with @nicktrusty (Taken with Instagram at Dalyan Camping)

Our cool new experiment, Radar, uses everyone’s latest foursquare checkins to keep us all up to date on what time it is for the 3 of us as we spread out across the globe.  Today: Paris, Iceland and Los Angeles.

Our cool new experiment, Radar, uses everyone’s latest foursquare checkins to keep us all up to date on what time it is for the 3 of us as we spread out across the globe.  Today: Paris, Iceland and Los Angeles.

Open tabs = hints of things to come

Open tabs = hints of things to come

Destiny is for people who are too lazy to create alternate timelines.

—R. Stevens

Creating shit is awesome. Creating shit for unappreciative fucks is shitty.

Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.

—Ron Swanson (via ckck)

Camping in Ithaca.

Camping in Ithaca.