an online community to connect teachers, parents and students

› Project: Design a robust online community to bring the JCC Association’s An Ethical Start® preschool program into homes keeping parents, teachers, and students connected
› Position: Consultant, Online Community Designer
› Year: 2006
› Project Summary: See below

Serving more than 350 locations, the JCC Association supports the largest network of Jewish early childhood centers and Jewish summer camps in North America. Akgold helped design and build an online community.

Services:

› Consulting
› Strategy
› Ideation
› Ground research in US and Israel
› User experience design
› Creative design
› Online community development
› Branding

Opportunity

Known for the quality of education, educators, and extraordinary programs, parents of all backgrounds select the Jewish Community Center (JCC) Association for their children’s early childhood education. One of its core programs, An Ethical Start®, was developed by a leading group of educators working in the main JCC New York office.

The JCC Assocation selected Akgold to design and build a community web application and platform tailored to its unique audience and needs. The JCC team found a partner who could bring their vision to life.

The AES project was funded by Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Person’s Foundation, The Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Awards Committee, The Brill Family Charitable Trust, The Covenant Foundation, and The Marcus Foundation.

Solution

Andrew collaborated closely with an international team of education professionals. Working with leading childhood educators, Andrew went into the field both to the national Kadima Conference and also to Israel with the team to learn about users, their needs, and the opportunity to extend the value proposition.

What started out being a simple website soon grew into a robust web application complete with user accounts/authentication, an administrative backend, dynamic population of content, and interactive modules. Computer Creation Systems was the key technology partner.

Results

AKGold Internet was able to advance the project through the prototypes, personas, interaction design, information architecture, visual and editorial design, and coded front-end page templates. Building a successful online community requires a strong foundation and the roots of the An Ethical Start® Family Website are already planted in JCCs throughout North America.

Testimonial

An Ethical Start® had developed a full line of educational products but was missing a key component: leveraging the power of the internet to connect the community.

The AES program had developed from pilot stage in the late 1990’s to a full curriculum complete with lesson plans, music CDs, child books, Peer K. Explorer and Dafna dolls, and a support staff. There were major educator conferences called Peer K. Academy and also a yearly Kadimah Conference. Building off this strong foundation, the visionary team saw a unique opportunity to work with Andrew to bring the team’s vision to life.

The goal was to help An Ethical Start® create a successful website that would help the program connect together the community and become a powerful building block for the future growth of the program. How could the team leverage the An Ethical Start® assets — the people, materials, vision, network of JCC preschool teachers, parents students, and JCCs around the world, and extend the value proposition through online technology?

Clarify Goals & Users

Akgold helped the JCC team synthesize the core goals for the project. Next came focusing on the users by creating personas and scenarios. By defining the goals and focusing users during the design journey, the team was able to hit the target.

Co-Design

Partnership and working hand in hand with the JCC An Ethical Start® team was the key to success. Andrew did field research with the educators in America and Israel to fully understand the user needs, the value of the program and the core message rooted in Jewish education.

IA and Flow Charts

This phase consisted of defining the goals for the community, characterizing the audience, defining applicable web technology, and creating a series of specialized flow charts and key page prototypes.

Visual Design

The Visual Design phase consisted of a complete design analysis, exploration of design angles and navigational layouts, distilling these into a single thematic focus, followed by completion of design elements and then the preparation of the html templates.

Partnership with Engineering

Andrew worked hand in hand with the JCC’s technology and engineering partners. This close collaboration between the JCC team, Akgold and technology allowed the group to prototype and iterate rapidly to advance the design.

Endorsements

“Thank YOU for the amazing job you did to give us a visual image that is accessible to all.”
— Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Professor of Child Psychology, Temple University

“It was great working with you and I hope we will continue to be in touch in the future. Your work is incredible, and I’ve learned a lot from you.”
— Simi Peters, Jewish Scholar & Teacher, Author of Learning to Read Midrash

Summary

› Consulted with JCC Association’s An Ethical Start team

› Performed field research by going to conference and Israel with team to build personas

› Created Design & Branding Analysis for extending value proposition of JCC Association brand

› Created Information Architecture, Flowcharts and UI specifications

› Produced iterative designs and prototypes and final visual, interactive and editorial design

› Delivered final HTML, CSS & Javascript code for front-end and admin

› Delivered Online Style Guide with font, color and grid specifications