Substantial

A few months ago we launched the site for IDEO.org, the non-profit arm of design powerhouse IDEO, that takes their human-centered design principles and uses them to solve the world’s poverty-related problems. With HCD Connect, a portal to bring together the world’s human-centered design community, they extend upon their goals of using HCD techniques to solve real-world problems.

HCD Connect enables users to become a member of the HCD community, offering up the HCD Toolkit to learn the basics of HCD, but more importantly allows them to communicate with one another. Users can view both stories and users according to location and project area, and can ask (or answer) questions about how to best use these practices in the real world. In the future, individuals and organizations using HCD will be able to apply for microgrants to help with their efforts.

The principles of HCD are a powerful tool for solving many of the world’s problems. We’re proud to have been part of the launch of HCD Connect, putting those ideas into even more hands.

Please visit HCD Connect for more information.

More screenshots after the jump.

It’s inarguable that education is important, but this isn’t always reflected in the attention paid to youth. The non-profit Get Schooled creates school-based challenges that encourage high school students to perform those activities that improve their chances for future success, namely graduate high school and attend college. Their latest competition, the College Dollars Challenge, focuses on teaching high school seniors their various option for paying for college. The challenge is comprised of a variety of activities, tracked at a school level on a leaderboard, and including the Know Your Numbers quiz, all of which was coupled with significant improvements under the hood for the entire platform.

The school leaderboard tracks the progress of schools around the nation as they participate in Get Schooled’s challenge. This leaderboard displays how various schools rank against one another and breaks down their aggregate score to show how they’ve achieved their ranking. In doing so, it prompts students to tap into their school spirit to improve their own ranking. Because of the audience, design for this was necessarily bold in nature, presenting potentially dry information in an appealing way through bright colors and non-standard typography.

The Money Game quiz asks questions related to four areas of student finances: college costs, transportation, employment and credit. As questions are answered correctly a piece of a hidden image is revealed, ultimately resulting in a motivational video . As with the above, a simple presentation of compelling colors and simple iconography make this quiz accessible for its target demographic. Technically, this quiz is notable because of its sparse use of graphics, with most of the seen shapes drawn within the browser.

Work on Get Schooled is ongoing, with more enhancements due in the coming weeks. For now, go peruse the College Dollars Challenge and take the Know Your Numbers quiz.

This is the third year Substantial has built the web presence for Internet Week New York, the festival celebrating New York’s Internet and technology community. For this year’s season, the IWNY staff decided that they wanted to focus on two specific efforts, modernizing the overall site aesthetic and improving usability on the events schedule.

In earlier years of Internet Week New York, the theme was very digital, executed through a pixelated visual approach and a very bright, neon color palette. The event has matured, warranting some rethinking on their overall presentation. Under the hood, administrators have always clamored for more content flexibility, allowing them to adjust their messaging throughout the IWNY season. The “8-bit” aesthetic has been removed for 2012, replaced with a cleaner, more muted set of typefaces and colors. By pulling back the amount of “pop” on the page itself, the admin-uploaded content from IWNY is given prominence, lending visual importance to IWNY’s various calls to action.

One of the most utilized portions of the site is the schedule. Internet Week NY has an open model, allowing the public to sign up as partners and throw affiliated events. This leads to hundreds of events throughout NYC, posing a challenge to attendees looking to organize their own itinerary. As part of the older aesthetic, there was a set of colors and category iconography, which wasn’t always the clearest for users to discern. While the colors remain, the iconography has been removed, easing comprehension for new and returning users. Additionally, the updated typography and layout lend themselves to better skimming without having the wealth of content become overwhelming.

For those of you looking for the technical details, the Internet Week New York site is written on a Rails stack with a custom CMS.

But enough talking about the site. Check it out for yourself: Internet Week New York.