Gulo Customized Internet Solutions

Client:

American Iron and Steel Institute

Project Background:

AISI asked us to create a sophisticated web-based balloting system to facilitate committee voting and enhance/ease iMIS administration. This new members-only section of the website had to work with existing user logins/passwords, as well as, any committee and subcommittee access privileges created in iMIS. The new system also needed to support document uploads, archiving, email notifications, and user comments.

Goals:

Migrate all committee administration from iMIS to a web-based application, make communication within committees easier (one of the biggest issue users had was being inundated with e-mail all day trying to come to resolutions), and create the ability to track voting committee members and generate comprehensive reports for further data analysis.

Solution:

We started by creating wireframe HTML prototypes for AISI staff to visualize and offer feedback on common tasks such as creating a new committee and ballot creation. After every interface was defined and agreed upon, our development team went to work integrating the new application with iMIS. Next, we created a page where staff could create committees (or view previously created ones from iMIS) and rosters. We included a dynamic search to make adding new members to the roster and assigning a role a snap.

With the committee creation and membership roster pages working seamlessly with iMIS, we went to work on balloting. Administrators needed a mechanism to create new ballots and ballot items via the web. We added that and the ability to upload supporting materials such a Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, etc. Next, we adding a voting system. Because 'No' and 'Abstain' votes required an explanation, we added a simple comment form for members to add a reason for their votes. This set the foundation for a pull system, rather than information being pushed to users.

After voting was up and running, we create a voting summary and reports page. This page collects valuable information for each ballot such response rates, vote tallies, user comments, etc. and can be viewed as HTML or exported to PDF.

Next, we created a "dashboard" for members. This page acts as a landing page - customized for each member - giving an overview of their committees' updates: news items, new ballots, newly uploaded documents, comments, etc. To ensure a high response rate on each ballot, email reminders are sent for ballots that are new and about to close.

We finished the project with a couple rounds of testing and launched without a single hiccup.