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Two gutsy, visionary entrepreneurs set their sights on solving the daily pains experienced by principal investigators and research coordinators everywhere when managing large life science research studies: poor participant recruitment, inefficient participant tracking systems, and lack of measurable engagement.

A combination of administrative headaches, time-consuming scheduling, and recruitment worries plagues every life science research effort. Researchers are faced with too-expensive, cumbersome software aimed at big companies with big pockets, causing research teams to fall back on a messy, make-do patchwork of spreadsheets, sticky notes, word processors, and calendars.

University of Michigan psychology professor Nestor Lopez-Duran and strategy consultant Jacob Bonenberger believe researchers deserve better.

Nestor and Jacob turned to NewFoundry for a complete end-to-end solution involving:

• Marketplace positioning
• Naming
• Brand identity
• Application engineering
• Website development

The result is the birth of Ripple: a web-based management solution that helps researchers conquer participant recruitment, streamline participant tracking, and ultimately shorten the research lifecycle. Working closely with NewFoundry strategists, designers and engineers, Nestor and Jacob were able to frame, fabricate, and forge their brand vision at an effective and efficient pace.

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Entrepreneur and media industry veteran Kathleen Hiraga approached NewFoundry to bring her Big Idea to life: Pop-Post. She envisioned Pop-Post as an online platform to showcase female artists, designers, creators, and fans of entertainment content.

With gaming enthusiasts’ show PAX East quickly approaching, our design, engineering, and project team jumped right in and took the Pop-Post brand from concept to fully-launched entertainment platform in just a few short months. The Pop-Post team would introduce its platform to the world at this high-profile fan event.

Working closely with Kathleen and helping to further refine the vision for Pop-Post, our design team created the Pop-Post brand design and identity. Early, rapid concept creation and distillation propelled the team to quickly land on a look and feel for the brand and the platform. Our design and engineering teams collaborated closely throughout to seamlessly extend the design into rock solid UX/UI. With the site design firmly in place, our engineering team built the platform from the ground up.

With just days remaining before showtime, the last of the content was submitted by contributing artists, and NewFoundry completed the last important tasks leading up to launch: full site QA and user testing. With all systems “go”, Pop-Post was born and introduced to the world the very next morning.

Pop-Post features animation, video content, reviews, guest interviews, and events in an open culture that invites everyone to enjoy and become engaged. Pop-Post is focused on using the site to its full effect to build an independent, diverse social community from a female perspective and continues to build its loyal fan base daily.

To experience the Pop-Post entertainment platform, visit Pop-Post.com.

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RedViking designs, builds, and implements manufacturing and test solutions for some of the world’s largest manufacturers in aerospace, automotive, defense, commercial vehicles, heavy equipment, and construction equipment. They are a proven team of engineers known for rethinking the status quo and truly advancing manufacturing operations. Formerly known as Superior Controls, RedViking first called on NewFoundry to create a new company name, marketplace positioning, and visual identity for itself. When it came time to launch its new MES (manufacturing execution systems) platform, RedViking turned to NewFoundry once again to name and design a visual identity for its one-of-a-kind, flexible, modular approach to managing manufacturing operations.

After discovery and research, our strategy team narrowed in on a focus for the brand centered on the idea of an enterprise in the pursuit of operational excellence and striving for advances through investigation and action. An evocative name, Argonaut, rose to the top of the selection set. It is an original, unexpected name in the manufacturing solutions marketplace. The origins of the word provide a nod to seafaring culture with the pairing of argo (the ship) and nautes (sailor), and the name reflects the RedViking brand personality powerfully. Finally, we paired the name with a new descriptor befitting the Argonaut difference; Argonaut is a Manufacturing Performance Platform (and not simply another MES).

Our design team brought the new name to life by creating a powerful visual identity that both gives a nod to new technology and creates visual cohesion with the RedViking master brand.

Learn more about RedViking and Argonaut at redviking.com.

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Scott Michaels, of the acclaimed Dearly Departed Tours in LA, sought out NewFoundry’s design and development expertise to bring a taste of his tours to the palm of your hand. The Dearly Departed Death-a-Day Calendar is a light-hearted look at the dark side of Hollywood. Famous and infamous people die every day and this app will notify you of a well-known person who died on that day.

It’s a daily dose of celebrity death that provides factual details of where the particular person featured on that day was born, how and where they died and where they now permanently reside. The Death-a-Day Calendar is peppered with odd facts about the individual.

First launched for iOS in August 2016, the app is now available for Android in response to demand from Dearly Departed’s devoted fan base.

Get the free app:

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The University of Michigan, with faculty serving as director and co-director of the Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative, approached NewFoundry to create a mobile application for its venous thromboembolism (VTE) risk and patient outcome calculators. The calculators were proven, vital tools to help clinicians lower risk, reduce unnecessary procedures, and drop the rate of readmission for patients, but their previous web-based incarnation provided limited accessibility and usefulness.

NewFoundry designed and engineered a streamlined version of the calculators in one powerful application for iOS and Android handheld devices. The calculators are now completely portable, and since clinicians no longer need to sit in front of a computer or have an active network connection to use them, they can more freely interact with patients to guide them in bariatric procedure decision-making.

Get the free app:

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Building on the success of the consumer vehicle configurator, Club Car selected NewFoundry to design and engineer another vehicle configurator – also known as a custom CPQ (configure, price, quote) site – for its extensive line of commercial vehicles.

In addition to supporting fully customizable builds of 57 vehicles and 489 options and accessories, the custom-designed solution streamlines the purchase process with workflows that promote “fit-to-task” configurations targeted to customers in 5 core industries. To make it easier for customers to collaborate on product selections across organizations, the configurator enables the user to save a collection of configured vehicles as a fleet, then share a unique code with colleagues who may then review and edit the product selections before working with the Club Car sales team.

Finally, we engineered the configurator to integrate with Club Car’s CRM of choice paired with a dealer locator, which triggers a sales workflow for Club Car dealers the moment a user submits a fleet. Club Car has enjoyed a notable increase in leads and conversions for its commercial line since launch and reports over 900% return on its investment in the configurator.

Experience the commercial vehicle configurator at build.clubcar.com.

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Savvy parent and co-founder Sandy Aldrich sought NewFoundry’s naming, brand, design, and engineering expertise to forge her Big Idea for an app to bolster the good intentions of moms and dads everywhere.

When it comes to helping kids embrace responsibility and form good habits, most parents have the desire to build these skills, but struggle with consistency. Many families try to implement a system for chores, allowance, and commitments only to abandon it when life gets busy.

Enter Stridepost. Sandy Aldrich along with co-founders Saber Ammori and John Kello approached NewFoundry with the concept for their family organization app, and leveraged us to help them get to version 1.0 as quickly as possible. NewFoundry’s team of strategists, designers, and engineers engaged our proven Frame, Fabricate, and Forge process to build the new web and mobile application from the ground up.

Our team of strategists quickly got to work to craft a positioning strategy and name for the brand. Following discovery sessions, marketplace immersion, research, distillation, and strategy development, Stridepost emerged as the lead concept, ready to take the brand where it needed to go.

Our design team developed brand identity concepts for Stridepost, presenting them in a variety of applications to aid the Stridepost team in landing on the best fit concept to carry the brand forward.

With the visual identity for the brand established, our design team immediately moved into UX/UI design, wireframing, and static mockup development. The Stridepost team interfaced with parent groups throughout the process, gathering UX/UI insights that fueled refinement of the design and enabling the quick and confident initiation of engineering development.

NewFoundry’s software engineers developed separate mobile applications for kids and their parents, as well as a web application aimed at parents. Each interface presents different roles for the management of chores, rewards, and calendars, yet work seamlessly together. After further user testing and extensive QA, Stridepost was launched. Presently in beta testing, the app is making strides with families looking to make a change for the better.

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NewFoundry designed the UX/UI protocol that serves as the foundation of the all-new Michigan Department of Education (MDE) data and resource portal. The digital destination, developed by Red Cedar Solutions Group (RCSG), replaces CIMS and is designed to serve as a vessel of two-way communication between the MDE and the school districts it serves. NewFoundry designed the user standards protocol for RCSG to drive consistent clarity, accessibility, and navigability across all of its software products while ensuring that each of them looks as great as it functions.

With the launch date quickly approaching, education program management firm Public Sector Consultants tapped NewFoundry to develop a new name for the portal. NewFoundry strategists conducted discovery sessions with key stakeholders, marketplace immersion, and other secondary research to develop the strategic criteria that would guide the name ideation efforts. The result of the process is ‘Catamaran’, a name selected to represent forward motion, a vessel of two-way communication, and partnership between the state and districts. Our design team then developed the visual identity that would extend and reinforce the name’s values by creating an approachable, intuitive web portal user experience.

We couldn’t be more proud of the outcomes of this end-to-end, collaborative partnership with RCSG, Public Sector Consultants, and the Michigan Department of Education.

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