MACC
The founder of lead biologist of the Town of Hempstead (ToH) Conservation & Waterways sought out designers to create the MACC. Having an online presence helped to solidify the consortiums mission to the public and have a tangible product to generate partnerships.
The goal of this project was to meet the needs of the public, attract funding and research collaboration with universities and establishments.
The MACC website was presented the website during at the mayor’s monthly departments meeting. The project was approved to receive grant funding to continuing the development for the MACC!
Due to budget constraints the grant was put towards renovations of the analytical laboratory. The MACC website was put on hold and integrated within the ToH department website.
Defining the MACC
What Even Is The MACC?
The Mid Atlantic Coastal Consortium (MACC) is run by the Town of Hempstead (ToH) Conservation and Waterways. The Conservation and Waterways department is responsible for 17,000 acres of wetlands and 180 miles of coastal waterways. The department also operates four marinas.
Basically, it is a bunch of facilities to continue the research and development of sustainability and renewable energy!
But now, the lead biologist and stakeholders want to combine all the facilities as the MACC to make it easier for the public to understand what their vision is and be able to become a non-profit.
To continue to fund the MACC we were tasked with the challenge of tying in creating expressions of interests, memberships and how research facilities could be rented out for experiments.
Our main goal during this stage was to begin to shape how the employees of the MACC would want the facilites they worked in to be represented to the public.
Who will visit the site?
Why will they visit the site?
How will they interact with the site?
What will they get from the site?
These questions led us to create a partnership persona, a college-level internship persona and an elementary-aged persona attending a field trip at the facility.
Information Architecture + Site Map
Our team dived deeply for two weeks to develop the framework for how each page would relate to one and another. We started with low-fidelity site maps to organize information to a website format. It became a visual that helped in team meetings.
This was the point where we discussed with the stakeholders what kind of information was necessary for them to want to consider a member, let a research group use a facility for research or donate to the MACC.
