1-800 NoButts

Quick Stats

Client: California Smoker's Helpline
Project type: Site design, front-end programming, and backend framework design.
Delivery method: Online
Technology: HTML, CSS, Macromedia Flash and Graphic Design.

Description

1-800 NoButts was another project done with the Laboratory for Patient Informatics at UCSD. Steven's work on this project included the content framework architecture, interface design, all graphics, and CSS code. (Quite an odd combination, on reflection).

The web site is designed as an adjunct to a set of phone calls from counselors to enrolled smokers who are trying to quit. The goals of the site were to make compelling, useful content that would keep smokers coming back, and ultimately, help them to quit.

It includes a variety of Flash and Javascript/HTML tools, and integrated impact4 surveys at specified intervals.

Technical Details

Since the resources a quitting smoker is likely to need varies as they approach, pass, and move away from their quit date, the web site needed to adjust its content accordingly. The solution was an XML-based configuration system that specified the conditions and set of contents to include for every possible user state.

The user interface marked a dramatic shift to pure CSS at LPI. Given the complexities and sheer time needed to modify the look and feel of traditional HTML (content mixed with markup), the move to abstract CSS made sense.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the project was that a complete rewrite of the entire site navigation and interface philosophy actually took less work time than it would have taken to update existing systems. Here's to progress!