One school of thought when starting on your first project as a fledgling web agency might be: Start small – work your way up. Another might be – take the largest project you can manage; and ace it. We chose the latter.
Mednet Consult are a Healthcare communications agency based in Leeds. Working closely with pharmaceutical giant Janssen Cilag, Mednet organises and project manages meetings, events and integrated training packages for NHS Mental Health Professionals. They asked us to help take them online.
In January 2009, we designed and built a website that would provide a platform from which Mednet could publish and promote details of its product offerings and communicate its core values to the marketplace. Our bespoke content management system delivers Event Management; Assessed and Certified Case Study E-learning tests and Online Questionnaires; all wrapped up in a contemporary ‘light on dark’ design that was surprisingly well received by what might potentially be perceived as a stuffy industry.
Stuffy? Not likely; that banner…
At the beginning of each project; I, like most other designers tend to get somewhat carried away with all manner of ideas and suggestions for a proposed look and feel. I’m a fan of the old-skool mood board approach; and often send clients sketched ideas for imagery and animation etc.
So taking on board a conversation during an early meeting about the website needing to communicate Mednet’s ability to get the bottom of a problem and solve it, and considering the mental-health focus of the companies market. After the obligatory stock photo/video search I came up with the idea (among other – slightly more sensible ideas) of using animated neurons over-layed with strap-lines as the main site banner. I didn’t expect for a second they’d go for it!
Suffice to say this was one of those ‘what have I done?’ moments; I’ll admit that for a second the fact that this really could end up being VERY cheesy indeed and wondered whether I should re-approach the client, suggesting a different route. In hindsight – and after a few tense hours of pixel pushing; the animation looked spot-on. Different? Sure; but spot-on nonetheless. In fact; ‘that banner’ has caused quite a stir. It’s consistently been the one element of the design that has garnered fantastic feedback; it seems to be universally loved by the client and their audience alike. Result!
An impressively large back-end (Event Management tools – silly)
To compliment the shiny new front-end website; Mednet needed a way to keep things up to date without running back to us every two minutes. They organise events and meetings for NHS health care professionals. So we built a bespoke event management system that creates and publishes online forms, keeps track of event affiliate and attendee details; keeping everyone informed via Google-maps integration, automatic emails and client generated reporting.
We built this system so cost effectively; that employing a third party was out of the question. Our system would comparatively pay for itself within the cost of administrating 2-3 events using the worlds leading event management tools; and would be tailored specifically to the clients needs. A ‘no-brainer’ – I believe; is the correct phrase.
Online test and Questionnaires
Oh, It’s probably worth mentioning; that in addition to the Event Management side of things. We also built a small but perfectly formed e-learning package too! Mednet offer training around changes to the Mental Health Act, so we built a system that based on case study questions and answers tests written by a leading consultant psychiatrist would allow NHS doctors and psychiatric care nurse to be assessed on their level of understanding with important changes in legislation.
The system, tracks, scores and certifies users progress through the case studies. JavaScript enhancements provide important user feedback and aid the users experience; so we employed the same tricks when wrapping up the website and content management package with simple to use, great to look at; health care industry focused questionnaires.
It’s nice to start with a project that changes lives.
Since launch; things have gone brilliantly, hundreds of affiliates, attendees and test users have passed through the system with few incidents bar an early problem with dodgy server technology – cue Rackspace to the rescue; and the site now merrily generates important data, helps Mednet to organise and administrate important meetings for the health care industry and supports NHS staff members all over the UK.