Vintage

November 2000 Redesign

Services:
Web Design, Custom Database Programming, E-commerce

Description:
The Minnesota Medical Association is a professional association for physicians, residents and medical students in Minnesota. The organization provides effective advocacy and legislative representation for physician members.

The Challenge:
The Minnesota Medical Association contacted abbott & abbott for the second time in 2 years for an intensive upgrade with some complex e-commerce, specialized web searches, client modification of personal records, interactive surveys and a Minnesota Physician finder search feature. The main goal for the revision was to allow the visitor as much transparency into the organization of the site as possible.

Our Solution:
The MMA site was designed and built using Microsoft Access, Allaire Cold Fusion, and Macromedia Dreamweaver. The MMA site navigation is by roll out java menus. Using this type of navigation, specifically requested by MMA to be compatible with Microsoft IE version 5, a great deal of site depth can be shown on the front page. This depth allows the site visitor to jump well into the site with a single mouse click. The content on many of the site pages is located in an Access database. The database is maintained by MMA staff using a web browser and a simple web interface to add, modify or remove page content. Images and PDF documents can be uploaded to the site using this same interface.

This newly redesign site introduces increased functionality for members.
Features include

• Online membership registration and renewal
• Interactive surveys
• Topic-specific clinical searches
• Minnesota Physician Finder search feature
• Registered site members are able to modify personal information through a correction/update interface
• Paying annual dues and view dues payment status online.

The Challenge:   The Minnesota Medical Association contacted us asking if we could possibly "sparklize" their site. They had a clunky frames site that was badly organized and user-unfriendly. What wanted complete redesign of the homepage subpages would be easy to navigate find information also reflect professionalism organization.

Our Solution:
We met with the MMA folks and got a feel for their needs and interests. Their main interest was in the creation of a site that would enable the viewers to locate information fast and efficiently. They were also interested in having their monthly journal, "Minnesota Medicine" available online as well as other public awareness periodicals. MMA housed their site on a private IIS (Microsoft Internet Information Server) so we created the pages using Microsoft Frontpage. This would also enable them to make updates and changes easily.

When we planned the design for the homepage we wanted to pull together the various elements of what their organization stood for. We sought to tell their story in a glance. The homepage and subpages, using health/medical elements that would reflect the organization. We compressed a multitude of topics from the old site arranged the information into five easy to navigate sections. To address the issue of offering the periodicals online, we utilized Adobe Acrobat to create pdfs enabling the documents to retain their original format.

Databases for staff were employed as Microsoft Access files and were queried on web pages through ODBC. Security and a members only section were also setup as a repository of semi-private materials.