As one of the globe’s most iconic and visited destinations Times Square attracts millions of visitors a year. However it also has a vibrant community of over 230,000 ‘locals’ who have made the area their home or place of work. To serve this vibrant community The Times Square Alliance partnered with I-SITE to create a mobile App for their Crossroads program. The goal of Crossroads is to offer exclusive deals and discounts for local businesses, provide special insight on the area and promote events tailored to residents and workers.
For quick access to content and features the I-SITE team proposed an easy to navigate architecture with three primary content area – Deals, Events and Insider. As an added feature the user can select which area is most of interest to them and customize the App to load that content first. For the Alliance to publish important timely content the I-SITE team proposed an Alerts feature visible each time the user opens the App. It was determined during that up to the minute social and feature content would be published through the upcoming redesign of the Times Square website rather than the App.
Some of the key features of the Crossroads App include:
- Program sign up validated by a Times Square zip code
- Clean, attractive interface with strong visuals and Crossroads program branding
- Deal redemption through a screen shown during purchase at selected restaurant, store, theatre etc
- Deal Favoriting and Save for Later features
- Social sharing
- Tracking and content management through Salesforce
- Deployment on iOS, Android and Windows Mobile
During the planning phase the I-SITE team developed user flows, wireframes and a data management plan for the written and visual content housed in Salesforce. The I-SITE team designed the screen interfaces for the highest degree of standardization across the three platforms. All development was native on the each of the selected platforms.
The Alliance team will be responsible daily for the updating of the content for the App. I-SITE will provide ongoing support and design and development for future releases.
Theatre Philadelphia turned to I-SITE to design a new website to celebrate and promote professional theatre in the Greater Philadelphia region. Led by a group of local artistic and managing theatre leaders, the organization is best known for its annual Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre.
Key goals for the redesign project included:
- Create a beautiful and bold responsive design
- Deliver improved presentation and search feature for the shows
- Social media integration for Twitter and Facebook
- Development of a more manageable and flexible backend to better suit the organization’s needs
The I-SITE team worked closely with Theatre Philadelphia board member Anne Shuff and Administrative Director Joel Sumner to first review the current site and map out a new architecture, feature set and design direction for the website. It was agreed that the previous site did not take advantage of the wealth of fine photography provided by area theatres that include The Wilma Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Arden Theatre, 1812 Productions among others.
Major consideration in wireframing and design was given to the growing number of theatre lovers looking for information on shows and latest news from the theatre community on their smart phones. The navigation was simplified and new search tools introduced for shows and the Barrymore Awards.
I-SITE proposed building the new website on the Drupal 7 CMS. Theatre Philadelphia already had experience with managing the website on the previous Drupal 6 platform. I-SITE was able to bring its deep experience in building Drupal websites and customized modules for William Penn Foundation, The Painted Bride and Downtown New York among others.
At all stages of design and development key members of the theater community were involved in discussions and evaluations to ensure that the site would be optimized for their needs as well as for the ticket buying public.
I-SITE provided CMS training for key staff and continues to offer ongoing consulting, hosting and support.
The Painted Bride Arts Center turned to the I-SITE team to partner on an innovative community arts and culture project that makes visible the “unspoken” and seemingly invisible archives of cultural memory in Philadelphia’s rich and diverse past. Funded by Pew Charitable Trusts Re-PLACE-ing Philadelphia called upon artists/thinkers Reggie Wilson, Faustin Linyekula, and Marty Pottenger to weave a critical dialogue and conversation within and around their work.
For the online program Painted Bride challenged I-SITE to find innovative ways to report on the artists’ work and also encourage communities and the public to use their smartphones and tablets to share their stories and insights while on the move.
All the site content, whether a bio, video or photograph, is in the form of a field note that is displayed on the home page and can be submitted by the public as well as the artists/thinkers, Free Radicals aka advisors King Britt, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Brenda Dixon Gottschild, and the Painted Bride team. The field notes can be filtered by tags, author keyword and time period therefore creating a rich and interactive archive that will remain online as a resource after the completion of the 18-month project.
The website built on Drupal 7, is fully responsive and uses Isotope and Masonry libraries to sort and filter interactively with the varying media formats and content published on the site. Post launch the I-SITE team continues to support the website with additional content and features.
The I-SITE team continued its long-term love affair with New York with the redesign of the Downtown Alliance’s website for visitors, residents and businesses.
With an extensive set of features, listings and content for multiple audiences, the I-SITE team collaborated closely with Alliance staff on mapping out a new architecture and features set that would deliver a greatly improved experience to site visitors looking for both information and inspiration.
The fully responsive design is rich in vibrant photography that helps communicate the ongoing revitalization of Lower Manhattan for live, work and play. New customized mapping and search tools were developed to deliver easy access to listings and events on mobile devices as well as desktop computers.
Key features of the new site include:
- Custom searchable maps for locating restaurants, hotels, events and much more.
- Full event list calendar with category filtering and maps.
- New My Visit Planner for saving events and listings to share with friends and family.
- Video testimonials from a host of industry leaders talking about the benefit of locating In Lower Manhattan.
- Improved social Media integration for Twitter and Instagram.
Post-launch the I-SITE team suppported the website, working closely with the Alliance on adding new features and enhancements.
Lower Manhattan is rapidly becoming the place for creative and tech start-ups as well as big industry names to locate or relocate. Already 800+ tech firms and startups, major brands, agencies and media companies have set up in LM including such names as Condé Nast, Paperless Post and Fast Company.
In response to the rapid growth of the community The Downtown Alliance and design firm Gensler have created Lower Manhattan HQ aka LMHQ, an exciting new collaboration space at 150 Broadway featuring event space with state of the art A/V, meeting & brainstorming rooms, coffee bar and programming by NY Tech Meetup and NY Tech Council.
I-SITE was challenged with designing and developing the website to launch LMHQ and create excitement in the community about everything the space has to offer. Goals included:
- Clean, functional design
- Clearly communicate the vision and spirit of the space and staff
- Strong call-to-actions to drive membership
- Social media integration to create energy in the community
The look and feel for the site was created around the LMHQ brand and colors with enough flexibility to integrate dynamic photography and imagery. All the pages are fully responsive to accommodate the large number of community members using their smartphones and tablets.
I-SITE continues to support the LMHQ team with the maintenance of the website and integration of new features.
On a mission to make a difference by combining their passions for natural, built, and human environments, Philadelphia and Berkeley architects Re:Vision sparked our imaginations when they approached us to design a new website for their firm.
The goal was to develop a fully responsive site for desktop and mobile that demonstrates Re:Vision’s deep understanding of sustainability, design and function. The website serves many audiences including other architects, engineers, community leaders and commercial and residential customers. The focal point of the website is Re:Vision’s impressive portfolio of work. I-SITE developed a custom ‘Build Your Portfolio’ feature for users to assemble and review select projects of interest.
Andee Mazzocco of Sendgrid brought her extensive experience designing informational and marketing programs for architects by collaborating on the concept development and design execution. The team’s goal was to create a functional and elegant responsive design that clearly communicates Re:Vision’s work and expertise.
The site also includes employee profiles and a Blog with articles in a number of different categories including Green Architecture, LEED/Rating Systems and Community Engagement.
Built on WordPress the website launched in May 2014 and has already been recognized with a 2014 Interactive Media Award for Best in Class in the Architecture/Interior Design category.
In 2013 I-SITE teamed up with the Great Apes Survival Partnership [GRASP] headquartered at the United Nations in Nairobi, Kenya to create a mobile application that will draw on the rich and diverse content of the leaders in ape conservation. The App available both for Android and iPhone features bonobos, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans facts along with current projects being run by the partners in the field. Previewed at the Great Apes Summit in Fall 2013, The app launched in mid-February featuring projects from the African Wildlife Foundation, The Orangutan Conservancy, The Goualougo Triangle Ape Project and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
With rich infographics, photography and video Great Ape lovers can now follow projects they are interested in and donate directly to the project partners. Post launch the GRASP team will manage the content through a custom CMS and continue to add partners and projects to the App.
I-SITE follows the success of iGorilla, the first mobile application dedicated the the conservation of Great Apes.
As techies, designers and major supporters of STEM education we were excited when education nonprofit Iridescent Learning approached us to design and develop a mobile app that teaches children and all bird lovers about different types of birds, their habitats and behaviors.
The “Build” part of the app provides an opportunity for the user to test their learning by creating a bird that is adapted to a specific environment. On completion the user can ‘fly’ the bird through its natural environment.
To create the rich, illustrative design we worked with the illustrations of Ioana and videos from our friends at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We designed the app to appeal to the younger demographic, as well as to not distract from the important learning aspect.
Build a Bird was featured in the Apps Store’s ‘New and Newsworthy’ section and downloaded over 50,000 times.
For more information on this project and if your interested in creating something similar for your organization contact Ian Cross.
In early 2013 the I-SITE developed and launched the Android version of the free Downtown NYC smartphone app, which is the latest in a series of web and mobile applications created for our client, the Alliance for Downtown New York. The application was first developed as an iOS app for iPhones and iPads. I-SITE previously launched the downtownny.com website in the spring of 2011.
The app was created for tourists, residents and workers in Lower Manhattan to to find events on an integrated Google map, share the events and locations via social media, and add events to their calendar apps on their mobile devices.
The Android app’s interface is very similar to the iOS version, but customized for Android. Both apps utilize an easy-to-use, clean interface to enable the user to, in seconds, find events and locations that interest them. Downtown Alliance staff can easily add events and other data to the application through the same CMS interface as they use to manage the website content and iPhone app.
In 2010 the I-SITE team paved the way for animal conservation on mobile with iGorilla, the first iPhone app with the sole purpose of supporting the plight of Africa’s endangered mountain gorilla.
The idea for the app came about after CEO Ian Cross traveled to Virunga in 2006 after attending a creative economy conference in Rwanda. On his return Ian reached out to Emmanuel De Merode and Samantha Newport of Virunga National Park to discuss developing a social network for the gorilla families. With the explosion in the number of smart phones worldwide this idea eventually evolved into iGorilla.
Sourcing up-to-date content from the field team of scientists and rangers the users were able to select and follow a gorilla family, read updates and watch videos and donate directly to the park to support one of the many projects dedicated to gorilla conservation and helping the community.
Soon after release the App was featured on the home page of the BBC News website. For more information on this project and if your interested in creating something similar for your organization contact Ian Cross.
