Last night, I attended a meetup for representatives from various creative communities here in Portland, such as the AIGA, PAF, and CHIFOO. Other concerned citizens of the web also attended the meeting, including Bram Pitoyo (@brampitoyo) and Amber Case (@caseorganic). A further meeting is tentatively scheduled for next week & we hope to be joined by a city official or two with some say in the process.
For a little background on the PortlandOnline.com Refresh contest, see the City’s “official” request here, and some notable responses.
The consensus was that the City doesn’t really understand the potential of what a good website can do, both in terms of branding the city and even in terms of its functionality. There has been next-to-no communication with the organized creative community to date about the manner of the “RFP” (there may be some bylaws the City is trying to avoid by not calling it such) and this has created a lot of frustration, especially among the more design-y groups.
The City’s only evident goal seems to be “community buy-in” and “community engagement” and this may be one of the reasons they cannot solicit a formal RFP. But they also seem to be under the impression that designs from community members can easily be shoe-horned onto their existing infrastructure without any real thought to site architecture, usability, searchability, or anything beyond a basic idea of what a website can look like. In this sense, they are basically asking for “a piece of artwork” rather than a functional model for a website. There essentially is no project brief that any of the groups can even lend their assistance with.
There’s also the conceptual idea that by soliciting spec work for FREE that the City is explicitly saying that good design is not worth being compensated for. Apparently they have a development budget for loads of in-house staff but no one is quite sure just how much; one figure is as high as $10MM. It was generally agreed to talk about the financial concept/budget for “design” and creative work AFTER hearing what the goals were.
But one of the attendees made a great point…even the cost of converting all of the old pages into the new design at a ridiculously small estimate of $1/page would mean a cost of $114,000…
Mayor Adams has seemed to be committed to showcasing Portland as a tech-savvy, design-savvy, creative, open-source community in the past but the city is about to have a “brand fail” if the contest goes through in its current form. None of us can afford that in this economy.
Personally I agreed with most of what was said, although I think perhaps some of the branding and advertising guys were a little too concerned about the brand side rather than the functionality side–but everyone was in favor of sitting down with the City to get a sense of their goals and then help them figure out how to best accomplish them.
David has spent his career helping location-oriented companies make the most of their digital presence.
Over the course of the 2010s, his teams built software products to optimize what are now Google Business Profiles and other directory listings, first as the co-founder and CEO of GetListed.org, then at Moz, and finally as VP at ThriveHive. David was also a co-founder of Local University, and the creator of the original Local Search Ranking Factors survey from 2008-2016, before handing it off to Darren Shaw.
David started his career in the mid-2000s as a consultant and is now back to that mode of work, teaming up with Mike Blumenthal and Greg Sterling at Near Media to help multi-location brands and vertical agencies understand how their customers interact with Google search results, and advising them on how to adjust their search strategy accordingly.
Thank you for posting the summary. I was pleased to be part of the discussion.
Just to clarify something mentioned in your last paragraph –
I wouldn’t want to leave the impression that functionality is somehow being overlooked when I discuss branding.
I don’t make a distinction between functionality and brand experience. Any more than I would separate product quality and brand experience. A positive brand experience online is impossible if usability and functionality is below par. The two issues are are inseparable. Functionality can be spot on, but there are many other touchpoints in a brand strategy. If they are compromised, the impeccable functionality is for naught.
As a brand consultant and strategic designer I consider functionality to be one part of a brand experience. Other pieces could include writing, design, product offering and quality, customer service, environments, etc. When any one of the many aspects of a brand is compromised, the entire brand suffers. Everything communicates.
I apologize for any misunderstanding.
Wow, they have 114,000 pages? Sounds like an interesting interview – most government websites fail in many ways, but they are getting better as time goes on.