Case study

MIT Ombuds Office

Client: MIT Ombuds Office

Services: visual design, development (Drupal Cloud), usability testing, client training, project management

The existing MIT Ombuds Office website was one of the first sites built using MIT’s Drupal Cloud platform, a hosted service offering no-cost hosting to the MIT community. The site was built internally by the IS&T group as an experiment.

New leadership at the MIT Ombuds Office in 2018 sought to have a new visual design with fresh content. Pixton Associates recommended working with writer and web strategist Kris Bierfelt. Kris worked closely with the Ombuds leadership and staff to create new strategic themes and key messages that informed the visual deisgn. A compass logo was developed to indicate the new direction of the office as well as a symbol of how the Ombuds can provide directional leadership to anyone in the MIT community.

Pixton Associates provided a variety of visual solutions with possible icon options. After a final choice, the focus was on developing the content. When the content was finalized, PA carried out a usability phase in which a variety of MIT staff were asked to respond to some questions and hypothetcial tasks that might represent what potential users of the Ombuds services might be seeking. Based on the results of the usability phase, a few changes were made, and the site went live in August 2019.