Renton Technical College Website
At RTC, we decided to update our website after more than eight years with our old design. A lot changes in nearly a decade. Our old site was showing its age; the design was dated and our menu contained nearly 200 items between six different drop-down menus. In updating our new site, our goals were simple: 1) create a student-focused design; and 2) improve the user experience.
We weren’t only updating the look and feel; we were also moving to a new CMS and coding most of the assets ourselves. In three months of behind-the-scenes work from three full-time employees, we migrated our site from open-source Drupal to Modern Campus CMS. Our streamlined design focused on the pages that students use the most. Using user data, we reduced our menu from 198 items to 42.
In my role, I led the menu/navigation redesign and served as project manager. This massive undertaking was the highlight of my career thus far.
Pro Bono Center Annual Reports
The Pro Bono Center publishes an annual report recounting its achievements and challenges. During my time at the PBC, I managed the report from conception to production. It involved pitching and drafting stories, managing the design layout, and posting report highlights online after publication.
The report features legal statistics, client success stories, and budgetary information. Initial information gathering requires diligent project management and open communication with our entire staff. The freshly compiled data and notable events help to guide the report’s theme and major narratives.
Marketing Newsletters
At the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center, I planned and executed our marketing newsletters. We released two marketing newsletters: pro bono editions of the Bar Bulletin, which go to nearly 100,000 D.C. Bar members monthly, and the Pro Bono Brief, a quarterly email to dedicated volunteers and donors.
Creating newsletters involved selecting and vetting story ideas with staff, drafting stories suited for each audience, and using Higher Logic to populate and send marketing emails. We used data like open rate and click numbers to determine the best send times and the most popular stories.
View the Center’s newsletter archive (March 2020 to September 2021).
Fourth National Climate Assessment Web Page
The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is congressionally mandated to create a new National Climate Assessment every four years. During my time at USGCRP, our staff was hard at work on the fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4).
As Communications Coordinator, web content management was one of my key responsibilities. It was natural that the design and implementation of our NCA4 web page fell to me. I was given a list of content that needed to appear on the page and left to it.
I opted for a menu that would allow the user to preview each section without overwhelming them. More ancillary aspects of the page, like news updates and notices, were placed on the right sidebar so they wouldn’t crowd the crucial information in the center.
Our Changing Planet: Fiscal Year 2017
USGCRP is also tasked with authoring an annual report to Congress addressing milestones in climate change science and the program’s budget. I served as copy editor on the 2017 edition, which included a broad spectrum of scientific content, including a report on President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.
Undergraduate College Advertisement
In an undergraduate advertising copywriting class, we were assigned a print ad. I selected Tabasco from a list of brands. The ad speaks for itself.
Matt Stephen 