Erica Dillon /

Interactive + Multimedia Producer
Writer + Editor

RIPPLE

RIPPLE connects rural communities to each other through the issues they share. Rural bloggers’ experiences and multimedia stories anchor the site, while a simple resources tools allows people to share local opportunities.

Visit the RIPPLE Website

contribution

Initially conceived by Rural Development Initiative (RDI) as a “peer-to-peer learning exchange” for people living in the rural Northwest, they found that the RIPPLE website was trying to fulfill too many roles. Was it a project management tool for RDI leadership workshops? A list of community development tools? An online discussion forum? It was clear that the site had strayed far from its original goal of inspiring rural inhabitants to connect to issues and each other. Upswell helped RDI better meet project management needs with an off-the-shelf solution separate from the site itself, and reconceived RIPPLE around a robust content strategy that was cognizant of a target audience still tentatively using the web. We kept ease of use, a gentle introduction to social media features, and low-threshold ways to interact with the site in view at all times. A clean, elegant visual design brought out the beauty of rural stories and allowed interactive features to be easily understood by users. At the same time, we built a robust content management system for community bloggers and RIPPLE administrators to quickly create and publish new blogs and multimedia stories on the site.

credits

Producer: Erica Dillon | Content Developers: Erica Dillon, Robert Ault (RDI), Beth Gilden (RDI), Alison Cassin (RDI) | Information Architects: Erica Dillon, Erica Hassinger | Designer: Erica Hassinger | Developer: Lee Ritter | IT: Kevin Karwaski, Hal Noble (NetCorps) | Client: Rural Development Initiatives, Inc. (RDI)