PixelMEDIA Inc.

Top from left: Bryan, Brendan, Terence, Cris. Bottom: Matt, Erik, Josh. Not shown is Rachel.

On May 7^th, a group of PixelMEDIA employees as well as our CEO’s wife, Rachel, will be taking on the elements and obstacles setup on Mt. Snow in Vermont for the Tough Mudder competition.  Our team has pledged their support of The Friends Project by pledging $1 per a mile.  Show your support of The Friends Project as well as PixelMEDIA team “PixelMUDDIER” by pledging what you can.  Donations are accepted directly through The Friends Project via PayPal and credit card.

The new Friends Project website went “live” yesterday!  We celebrated this achievement last night in PixelMEDIA style with a party! What a great turn out of support from friends, family, and staff from both PixelMEDIA and The Friends Project.  We even had several young adult participants come too!

It was hard to keep a dry eye while watching the new video that Atlantic Media Productions produced for The Friends Project.  Listening to the parents talk about how isolated and depress their children were before The Friends Project to how Read More…

Wow, what a day!  The new Friends Project website is now live.  Take a look and see what the team has been working hard on for the last few months.  Great Job!  I look forward to the party tonight in celebration.

As we get ready for the new website to be live, I’ve been working with my developer, Andrew, on making updates using our chosen content management system.  Andrew has shown me a few things or two on how our client will be able to work independently to make updates.  Now normally, I’d start tuning out and thinking about what I’m making for dinner or something as the developer starts talking to me about css this and javascript that but with a content management system…I get it!   So, I’m in there making a new page and editing all on my own content and started creating photo galleries for the new website.   As I make photo galleries of the different events, I can’t help but look through the pictures and all I see are happy faces smiling back at me.

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What gets an information architect or content strategist excited? New audiences! What makes our jobs interesting is having the chance to learn about people, their interests, and their needs. And what make the job rewarding is making it possible for people to achieve those needs.

That’s what makes working on The Friends Project new website so interesting—and rewarding. The Friends Project is a non-profit organization in Portsmouth, NH, that organizes events and activities for people with disabilities. I met its tireless founder and president, Heidi Chase, as well as Nathaniel, a participant, and his parents, in our project kickoff meeting.

Our meeting agenda was basically the same as for a business client. Why not? The same questions and principles apply: Who is the audience? What are they looking for? What do you have to offer? What do you want them to do? We hit the whiteboards and the Friends Project team dug right in. Read More…

Our designer, Erica Rodrigues, recently presented Heidi Chase, Executive Director of the Friends Project, with design concepts for the new website.  Below were two of the homepage design concepts presented to Heidi.

Homepage concept option 1

Homepage concept option 2

From the team’s brainstorming session, Luke created a final org model for the new Friend’s Project website.  The importance of the org model is to categorize the current information into a coherent hierarchical structure as well as set a strong foundation for future website growth (as we know a 10 page website today could become a 100 page website tomorrow).  In addition to organizing the content, we are establishing the labels/naming convention for each category/area of the website.

You can click on the org model image below to see it better.

Organization Model for The Friends Project

We learned valuable information during our initial project meeting with our client that our content strategist and information architect, Luke Michel, applied to the next phase of our project….Information Architecture.  For such a big impressive word, Information Architecture to me, is basically learning as much as you can about the client, their goals, their audience needs, and more to organize and structure information for a really great “user experience”.   Luke’s dual role on this project is an important one.  He’s setting the stage for how Erica is approaching website design as well as creating the road map for the final website that Andrew will be developing later on.

From that first meeting, we learned from Heidi that the Friends Project wants the website to: help increase revenue, educate viewers, make it easier to give donations, create awareness, improve services, and improve user experience (make the website easier to use).  Additionally, we learned that the primary website audience consists of participants, parents, and college students (strong connection to UNH).  The secondary audience consists of donors/supporters of the Friends Project like parents, relatives, and friends. And lastly, the Press.  Each has their own interests and information needs that Luke constantly keeps in mind while drafting up an organizational model for the website.

Here are some pictures of the team during a whiteboard session after the kickoff meeting.

Setting up a Google Analytics (GA) account correctly is imperative in order to view and analyze your website activity. By a correct setup, I don’t just mean adding the GA code to all pages of your website. You must configure the code and the settings correctly so you are receiving accurate information. Here are the steps to take to ensure your GA data is correct.

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They call them Mud Runs and everyone thought I was nuts to even be considering participation in an athletic event that sets the last mile of the race on fire, expecting you – the participant – to run through this in order to complete the course. I’d bring it up in conversation and whoever I was talking to would express interest but then go to check out the website and come back to me with this look on their face that said, “You can’t be serious,” – but I am.

Of all the mud runs out there in the world, Tough Mudder makes the claim that it’s the hardest in the world. Your average mud run is 5k in length, 10k on the high end, and between the start and finish line there are numerous obstacles, like walls or cargo nets to climb, pits of mud to run through and tires to traverse like some kind of football movie training montage, minus the Eye of the Tiger soundtrack. Tough Mudder takes this format and triples the length and number of obstacles. The obstacles in each course were designed by members of the British Special Air Service, the UK’s equivalent of US Navy SEALs. The Tough Mudder organization describes it as Iron Man meets Burning Man, an aggro test of strength, endurance and all-around toughness, implying that a certain mental preparedness is necessary to finish. And let me tell you something: I cannot wait!

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