Project Story
Models for Change
Models for Change is a national initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to accelerate reform of juvenile justice systems across the country. It is a long-term, $100 million investment in more fair, rational, effective and developmentally appropriate approaches to juvenile justice.
The new web site offers up-to-date information about key research, publications and accomplishments in the field, and shares recent developments from Models for Change. The web site also lists major juvenile justice events on the calendar, provides a directory of organizations involved in the work and allows for a subscription to receive the initiative's newsletter and periodic updates.
To inform the redesign of the site, we conducted audience research to identify strategic directions and features that would increase the value of the site. One of the redesign goals, derived from the research, is to encourage more interaction and exchange of ideas among professionals involved in juvenile justice system reform.
We designed and developed the site, which utilizes our content management system (CMS) to allow easy collaborative editing and content maintenance. The CMS was heavily customized to accommodate the unique organization of the content with multiple ways to tag and sort content by issue, state and network.
The redesigned site launched in Spring of 2009 and during the first several months, traffic increased threefold compared to the older version of the site.