https://carldoescontent.com/design-within-reach daily 0.75 2025-10-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1599181852318-DPP4WD88REOGJIG229MF/Screen+Shot+2020-09-03+at+9.10.16+PM.png Design Within Reach - I began exploring information architecture and product presentation from the ground up. The previous site architecture was largely order imposed from above, with products shoehorned into categories that didn’t quite fit them. When developing the new information architecture, I started by auditing the overall product offer and recommended that some products be merged to make configuration as simple as possible. Then, I began grouping products according to their type, like lounge chairs or coffee tables. Finally, I looked at the higher order groupings that made sense given the overall offer. Once I arrived at a few proposals that made sense, I tested the existing state against the proposals using Optimal Workshop’s tree testing tool. After making some adjustments, I arrived at site navigation that performed significantly better than the current state did. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1599181852318-DPP4WD88REOGJIG229MF/Screen+Shot+2020-09-03+at+9.10.16+PM.png Design Within Reach - I began exploring information architecture and product presentation from the ground up. The previous site architecture was largely order imposed from above, with products shoehorned into categories that didn’t quite fit them. When developing the new information architecture, I started by auditing the overall product offer and recommended that some products be merged to make configuration as simple as possible. Then, I began grouping products according to their type, like lounge chairs or coffee tables. Finally, I looked at the higher order groupings that made sense given the overall offer. Once I arrived at a few proposals that made sense, I tested the existing state against the proposals using Optimal Workshop’s tree testing tool. After making some adjustments, I arrived at site navigation that performed significantly better than the current state did. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595942879350-6AXZ0KP4733QRPD1BIQP/Screen+Shot+2020-07-28+at+9.17.28+AM.png Design Within Reach - I broke content down into bite-sized chunks for scannability. Since I knew that our users do read, and the users who read more are likely to be ones who will convert more, I made content as easy to scan and arresting as possible. For people looking for dimensional content, it was easy to find and clear. For those who wanted to be inspired by marketing copy and get a reason they should buy, I leveraged bold typography our designers created to catch their eye and had our writers create pithy headlines to draw them in. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595942809147-2GQ1RUOW6KIMLANU35OU/image-asset.jpeg Design Within Reach - I structured everything in an Airtable base to make it easier for multiple writers to work and easier to import into the CMS. While it might have been ideal to have the writers working in the CMS, the volume of content that needed to be written and edited made it impossible. Instead, I structured an Airtable base with fields that correspond to the copy fields in the CMS. I also included the internal IDs for every product, so that imports would be easy. Writers worked in individualized Kanban boards of only the products assigned to them, and the editors did too. This kept everyone working on a manageable chunk of work and kept people from stepping on each others’ toes. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1599182983938-O315OVRK4IKOY1RW2AX7/Screen+Shot+2020-09-03+at+9.28.55+PM.png Design Within Reach - Where possible, I leveraged shared content to streamline the publishing effort. For things like the designer headshots and brief bios on product detail pages, I pulled content in from specific fields on the designer records themselves automatically. By leveraging the data relationships between brands, products, and designers, I reduced the amount of authoring time and effort, and made everything easier to maintain in the future. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595942701047-LLK8FKMSFW8H65Y4C5PX/image-asset.png Design Within Reach - Our rich environmental photography enticed customers, but without an easy way to identify the products in an image, they’re often lost. I worked with our product designers to create a feature that made all environmental images shoppable. By tagging the image with the orderable product SKUs featured in that image, customers can easily find what they want, even if it’s a lamp in the background of a photo. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1599184537900-L8VYCHOQ7G0O4K5S9T8O/Screen+Shot+2020-09-03+at+9.54.52+PM.png Design Within Reach - Since the product offer was so large, the writers couldn't rewrite everything, and not all products warranted the same rich experience. I went through the full offer with the top creatives at Design Within Reach and force ranked the products by sales volume, overall revenue, and brand value. Based on those rankings, I broke them into tiered groups so our content creators could focus their work more effectively. Those groups began with Tier One, which would receive rich storytelling and imagery, down to Tier Four, which would just have the existing content ported over. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1599182542873-JBW9F1XLPCWEY1B5LJR2/Screen+Shot+2020-09-03+at+9.22.05+PM.png Design Within Reach - DWR launched the site quickly, with a small team, and immediately got good results. Customers were able to find the products they wanted, learn about them, and buy them easily. This improved experience was due to the features I was responsible for like navigation and structured, scannable content, as well as a host of other features I influenced. In the spring of 2021, the site was a Webby Honoree in the website categories of Best User Experience and Best Navigation/Structure, highlighting the excellent work all of us on the team did to create the best possible site. https://carldoescontent.com/kitchenaid daily 0.75 2025-10-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595880525591-XF6LCQHNU81MK52ADN7A/KitchenAid-Cleaning-Flipbook_Page_01.jpg KitchenAid - KitchenAid came to us looking for a comprehensive set of training materials for their dealers’ sales associates. As they were about to launch a new line of major appliances, KitchenAid needed to educate their dealers about the new products and also explain the step-ups from one model to another. We separated the entire KichenAid major appliance offer into books that would address each of the brand’s six major categories: Built-In Cooking, Freestanding Cooking, Built-In Refrigeration, Freestanding Refrigeration, Commercial Cooking, and Cleaning. Then, we broke each book into a chapter that explained a particular class of appliances, like Wall Ovens or Disposals. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595876849477-QYMNQ4U1ZBFQ3LR7IVU9/image-asset.jpeg KitchenAid - Since flip books present information in a vertical spread, we weighed the priority of each feature and how much real estate it should get. To keep track of everything, we mapped out each book top-to-bottom instead of left to right so we could always keep in mind the way the reader would experience the books as they flipped through the pages. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595878726729-W6R9908GOP3K04XN9CC2/Ventilation.jpg KitchenAid - While the client was shooting photography of many products new to the brand, they did not have the budget to shoot everything. To get around this issue, the designers found creative solutions to represent difficult concepts about these products without using actual photography or renders. They either used illustrations, or creatively cropped photography to only show the parts of product that were still correct. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595877188217-BSTZSQ6FOYWQTVH41IOM/image-asset.jpeg KitchenAid https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595879123136-A788RE0UCYQPN27YVGDO/image-asset.jpeg KitchenAid https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595879461743-YO1H84CO1Y7T59L53TMO/KitchenAid-Cleaning-Flipbook_Page_19.jpg KitchenAid - The resulting six books were dense with complex information, but were scannable and easy-to-comprehend. Because of how they were organized, written, and designed, both sales associates and consumers could easily pick up a book, flip through and select a page at random, and learn about a feature without any prior context. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595877554651-D916QKVPEVUVIBGNTAMB/KitchenAid-Built-In-Cooking-Flipbook_Page_01.jpg KitchenAid - Once produced, the flip books went into the hands of sales associates throughout KichenAid’s retailer network. Since they were designed to stand up like a tent card, our flip books could be used as point-of-purchase advertising and customers could educate themselves about the products' features without a sales associate present. https://carldoescontent.com/geiger-website daily 0.75 2025-10-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595886261219-7ILCZ7K41GD3J31TBF2W/Screen+Shot+2020-07-27+at+4.46.11+PM.png Geiger - We began the project with a design sprint, diving deep into the site by conducting stakeholder interviews, ideating on solutions to problems we discovered, and testing with real users. During the sprint, we discovered that stakeholders weren’t happy that the site wasn’t responsive, was difficult to update, and had outdated content. Users wanted to easily access things like dimensions, product options, images for client presentations, and price books. For the rest of the project, we made sure we we’d prioritize these issues during our design, development, and content creation processes. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595886261219-7ILCZ7K41GD3J31TBF2W/Screen+Shot+2020-07-27+at+4.46.11+PM.png Geiger - We began the project with a design sprint, diving deep into the site by conducting stakeholder interviews, ideating on solutions to problems we discovered, and testing with real users. During the sprint, we discovered that stakeholders weren’t happy that the site wasn’t responsive, was difficult to update, and had outdated content. Users wanted to easily access things like dimensions, product options, images for client presentations, and price books. For the rest of the project, we made sure we we’d prioritize these issues during our design, development, and content creation processes. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595886584029-XZ9BY8X6N4UUQ9D4JP94/Crosshatch%2B-%2BLounge%2BSeating%2B-%2BGeiger.jpg Geiger - The existing product taxonomy didn’t give a good overview of the Geiger offer and made the navigation difficult to use. We immediately identified this as a valuable opportunity for the brand. At the beginning of the project, I did competitive benchmarking to discover how other manufacturers in the same furniture category were organizing their products and what labels were commonly being used to name these groupings. Based on that benchmarking and the shape of Geiger’s offer, I recommended a reorganization of their product taxonomy and a redesign of the navigation, resulting in a much more intuitive browse-and-find experience. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1596122349516-IR79XBLQGU2ZJ1E1W9BG/Screen+Shot+2020-07-30+at+11.18.43+AM.png Geiger - Marketing copy on the old site was written with an “inside out” mentality, thinking first about what the brand wants to say and not about what the user wants to read. By listening to our users first, we discovered that they wanted bite-size nuggets of information about the product that they could easily pull into their presentations and recall while meeting with their clients. I worked with the Geiger team to break up and rewrite the existing long marketing copy into clear value propositions for each product, and gave priority to explaining a product’s features and options clearly and succinctly. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1596122819894-VN9FYTRH9ILLTUOON6RQ/Crosshatch%2B-%2BLounge%2BSeating%2B-%2BGeiger.jpg Geiger https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1596123183272-QGUO4EL31ZSW837UHBRV/Geiger%252BRhythm%252BSpecs%252B-%252BCasegoods%252B-%252BGeiger.jpg Geiger - A key piece of content our users consistently asked for was dimensions. In the early stages of the specification process, architects and designers want easy access to basic product dimensions so they can decide whether a product they’re considering will even remotely work in their project. They do this to rapidly winnow down the options they’re considering for client presentations. Because of how critical this information is to their journey, we gave dimensions and dimensional drawings the highest position on the Specs pages of all Geiger products, even complicated casegoods products. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595901992826-7V6Q2053ZLDP3HSCRJLP/Geiger%252BRhythm%252BSpecs%252B-%252BCasegoods%252B-%252BGeiger.jpg Geiger - Design resources were a constraint of the project. We couldn’t afford to pull designers off other initiatives to mock up product pages for the authors working in the CMS. To get around this issue, we settled on a highly modular, but rigid system of templates for various page types including product pages, category and subcategory pages, and textile collection pages. We then mirrored the max cases of these pages in a tool called GatherContent, and had the writers deliver copy and design team deliver image selects to the content authoring team through that tool. As a result, the build phase went very smoothly, content authors had few questions as they were building pages, and we were able to stand up an entire site full of new, rich content using only a handful of mockups as our guides. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1595934079591-UYXAMU9SC1ABBE1C1UDD/image-asset.jpeg Geiger - The resulting site saw a significant increase in organic traffic after launch. On the site, users were demonstrably more able to complete their tasks, the amount of negative site feedback went down even as site traffic went up, and the overall NPS score went up. https://carldoescontent.com/herman-miller-website daily 0.75 2025-10-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683559060949-I5VP9IAO521ASKKMUFCG/image.jpg Herman Miller - Herman Miller’s website had not had a refresh in over 5 years and it wasn't responsive, so its mobile experience seriously suffered. Because the site lacked the most basic table-stakes responsive features, users needed to pinch and zoom to view any content on the site. The overall design and layout meant that much of the information on each page was buried in modal windows or through multiple tabs of content. Also, the look and feel of the site did not reflect Herman Miller’s emphasis on good design. The project’s goal was to update the design of the site so that it was responsive and elevated the company’s brand heritage. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683559060949-I5VP9IAO521ASKKMUFCG/image.jpg Herman Miller - Herman Miller’s website had not had a refresh in over 5 years and it wasn't responsive, so its mobile experience seriously suffered. Because the site lacked the most basic table-stakes responsive features, users needed to pinch and zoom to view any content on the site. The overall design and layout meant that much of the information on each page was buried in modal windows or through multiple tabs of content. Also, the look and feel of the site did not reflect Herman Miller’s emphasis on good design. The project’s goal was to update the design of the site so that it was responsive and elevated the company’s brand heritage. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683561151642-PGADBC2X28OT3072AYTF/www.hermanmiller.com_products_seating_side-chairs_eames-molded-wood-chairs_.jpg Herman Miller - Because Herman Miller has a global presence, we needed to be sensitive to translation needs. The project's budget did not allow for any translation to other languages, so one of my goals was to minimize translation costs. As a result, virtually no copy could be edited or altered, as any change would incur a translation cost. This proved to be a challenge, since the existing content did not easily fit into the new design. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683560460860-3GKYEJAE1L6GSWER6K3N/www.hermanmiller.com_location-selector_.jpg Herman Miller - Another challenge was that the new site is constructed of a variety of components that were new to the designers and page authors. To port over the existing copy and images to the new site, we used GatherContent to handle the wide range of content that would be migrated. GatherContent also housed links to visual assets in Herman Miller's DAM as a reference for the designers who would cut the asset renditions. I used GatherContent communicate to the designers which component the asset would be used in. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683562024612-3S8FUZE3L41VFDYHKNUS/www.hermanmiller.com_products_tables_conference-tables_eames-tables_.jpg Herman Miller - Since the old site had grown organically over the years, with little or no governance plan in place, the structure of pages varied wildly. To make sure everything aligned properly, I worked closely with several designers to create visual comps of a range of edge cases. I then took those visual comps and constructed templates in GatherContent that accounted for the variation between different pages. For truly one-off pages that required something unique, I created custom templates to house the content. I then migrated over the existing content and wrote any new copy that the pages required. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683562329325-5EWR5QZKAEUAQK246C7X/www.hermanmiller.com_solutions_living-office_people_.jpg Herman Miller - The finished site achieved all the project objectives. It was responsive, leveraged the visual assets well, and did not require significant changes to on-page content as we localized the site for our global presence. https://carldoescontent.com/picnic daily 0.75 2025-10-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1727880149119-UW748R6S28KBVNZAM78F/picnic.hermanmiller.com_.jpg Picnic Design System - As Herman Miller began to develop its design system, it was a perfect time to build a combined design system and brand standards site. Named for the famous annual company picnic posters designed by Steve Frykholm, the Herman Miller design system project offered a unique opportunity to take a look at how we handle all communications standards, not just our design foundations and component library. The current process of maintaining brand standards in PDFs on a shared drive was cumbersome and most designers and contractors were following standards that were out of date. Also, the brand team hadn’t looked at the current brand standards in years. While still mostly relevant, they were due for an update. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1596560321368-QMATU1DBH6QHDFB4AJXJ/Picnic%2B-%2BThe%2BHerman%2BMiller%2BDesign%2BSystem.jpg Picnic Design System https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1727880149119-UW748R6S28KBVNZAM78F/picnic.hermanmiller.com_.jpg Picnic Design System - As Herman Miller began to develop its design system, it was a perfect time to build a combined design system and brand standards site. Named for the famous annual company picnic posters designed by Steve Frykholm, the Herman Miller design system project offered a unique opportunity to take a look at how we handle all communications standards, not just our design foundations and component library. The current process of maintaining brand standards in PDFs on a shared drive was cumbersome and most designers and contractors were following standards that were out of date. Also, the brand team hadn’t looked at the current brand standards in years. While still mostly relevant, they were due for an update. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1686276171977-OBP3ZYFLUR60ZGH9YYKK/Start%25252BWriting%25252B-%25252BPicnic%25252B-%25252BThe%25252BHerman%25252BMiller%25252BDesign%25252BSystem.jpg Picnic Design System - I interviewed key stakeholders and individual contributors to understand all the content the site would need to support. My interviews covered all major creative disciplines at Herman Miller: digital experience design, brand design and editorial, interior design, and corporate communications. I cast as wide a net as possible so that the information architecture I created could scale to cover as many job roles as possible. I also asked each discipline for any existing documentation they had, or what a wish list for brand documentation could be. Once I gathered all that information, I began to organize it into an architecture that would be intuitive to navigate. The architecture also had to be flexible, because some of the standards on the teams’ wish lists still needed to be created. After I had a few options, I used the OptimalWorkshop tree testing tool to see which one worked better for us. I used our own creative teams as the test subjects because I wanted to be sure the architecture would work for the actual people I was designing for. Once I landed on an information architecture that met the project needs, I worked with our lead product designer to create a navigation pattern that supported it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683483822826-1D8IGAC11UR8OYJE1NV7/Screen%2BShot%2B2023-05-07%2Bat%2B2.22.55%2BPM.jpg Picnic Design System - At the same time, I partnered with our developers to model the content management system. The design system and brand standards site was going to be Herman Miller’s first headless CMS implementation, and this was an opportunity for us to get familiar with the technology before we started using it for other websites. I hosted working sessions with the developers to map out the content model and ensure the CMS we selected could operate the way we imagined. Every CMS is opinionated in some way, so we needed to make sure our assumptions matched reality. Finally, I tested the CMS as our developers built it to make sure the data objects, workflows, and settings made sense as someone who would be authoring content in the system. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683483165844-Z4AIL2W56C4LEYJPZFFI/picnic.hermanmiller.com_brand_our-tenets%2B%25284%2529.jpg Picnic Design System - In addition to covering detailed design and color specs, I worked with our brand team to include content about the brand's heritage. Herman Miller and its subsidiary companies are some of the most storied and celebrated design brands in the world. That design heritage is an integral part of the creative teams that work at the company. When I was digging through our design documentation, I was inspired to include content about the designers and thought leaders who had worked with our companies, and also included links to where users could either read or buy books about these design luminaries. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683484003411-F30179I1GU0CN6U4Q9OM/picnic.hermanmiller.com_brand_our-tenets%2B%25283%2529.jpg Picnic Design System - Our tokenization approach allowed us to link our color palette and typography to the design system site, meaning the site consumed and used our actual colors and type scale. This project gave us the chance to really flex our design system muscles. By simultaneously working on the tokenization strategy and content modeling, we built our CMS so that the site could run directly off our color and type tokens. This mean that any change to the design tokens would be immediately reflected in the design system site itself. Taking this extra step not only meant that design consistency was easy to maintain, it was great practice for future projects. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683551238396-OICDH81WI5JXSJ8TS01E/picnic.hermanmiller.com_brand_our-tenets%2B%25286%2529.jpg Picnic Design System - To manage content creation, I worked with our brand team to set up an agile process using SCRUM. Since this project was already experimental, I got the opportunity to explore alternative ways of working with our content creators in the brand team. One of these experiments was trying out an agile content process. I broke down content on each page into sections and subsections so we could easily tackle it in bite-sized chunks. Then in JIRA, I set up pages as epics and page sections as individual content tickets. I worked with our writers and designers to point these tickets based on estimated level of effort, and made sure that they didn’t try to tackle more points than they had capacity for. Each sprint, I ran a retrospective with the content creators to go over what went well, what we could improve, and what we’d like to start doing differently. As a result, I fine-tuned the agile content process and we were able to gradually increase velocity until all of the content was done. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1683484910015-LTYTQFUM6H6V9RCND5KM/picnic.hermanmiller.com_brand_our-tenets%2B%25284%2529.jpg Picnic Design System - The finished design system and brand standards site was created efficiently, with a small team, and was set up for future growth. In just a few weeks, our team of myself, our design lead, three developers, and one writer built our first headless digital experience and filled it with all the baseline brand standards our creative teams regularly referenced. Though the project got paused as we shifted focus to other work, we got the site to a place where it was useful and primed for future iterations and growth. https://carldoescontent.com/sutter-scout daily 0.75 2025-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1755789038010-ZLAYW6X0W42QL1BTBD0V/Login.jpg Sutter Scout - Scout invitees you to express your feelings creatively, either by writing, drawing, or speaking. These three canvasses invite you to share feelings with Scout however feels best for you in that moment. Depending on what feelings you express, the app then tailors the content shared with you to meet your needs in that moment. Scout can also send push notifications to remind you to share your feelings at whatever frequency and time of day makes the most sense for you: daily, twice a day, every other day, in the evening, etc. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1755283044385-KJP242SCSL6NOK43S1CG/Login.jpg Sutter Scout https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1755789038010-ZLAYW6X0W42QL1BTBD0V/Login.jpg Sutter Scout - Scout invitees you to express your feelings creatively, either by writing, drawing, or speaking. These three canvasses invite you to share feelings with Scout however feels best for you in that moment. Depending on what feelings you express, the app then tailors the content shared with you to meet your needs in that moment. Scout can also send push notifications to remind you to share your feelings at whatever frequency and time of day makes the most sense for you: daily, twice a day, every other day, in the evening, etc. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1755283041794-XD37GXS35YL97HAC3JIT/Expression+Canvas.jpg Sutter Scout - Based on your feelings shared, Scout offers a selection of lessons and activities you can complete. We developed these clinically-backed lessons and content with the team at Sutter Health, in cooperation with their youth advisor group, so that these lessons would be effective and approachable. You can either use the content based on how you’re feeling in the moment, or you can follow the structured path the whole library of content is organized into. This offers two paths: one for in-the-moment support, and the other for people motivated by reaching milestones as they complete sections over time. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1755283043690-DOTZX3UAQL683SG1500F/Home+Screen.jpg Sutter Scout - We based the content on principles outlined by the Rugged Resilience Measure, breaking each principle into multiple lessons and activities. Each piece of content was focused on an aspect of a Rugged Resilience Measure (RRM) principle. We created two kinds of content: lessons and activities. Lessons were text-based with engaging gifs and illustrations paired with bite-sized text that the user could swipe through to consume. These had rudimentary interactive elements as well, like hotspots on images or accordions to open or close. Activities were richer experiences created separately by our development team and uploaded into the app itself. These included drag-and-drop and matching games. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1755283041375-RSVYUN62Z1H0ZANAVR9W/Curriculum.jpg Sutter Scout - To incentivize engagement, we created a reward framework of badges you can earn. This reward framework encourages you to both engage with the feelings sharing aspect of Scout and the content in the app. Rewards are earned based on how long your maximum consecutive streak of sharing feelings is, or by completing milestones in the Scout lessons activities. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1755283039747-AAFFJ5SPODO8SM7USPB2/Awards.jpg Sutter Scout - We created a feelings trend dashboard so you can track your emotions over time. To give you transparency into how using Scout is impacting your mental health, the feelings trend dashboard breaks down the feelings data you’ve shared. You can see all the ways you’ve expressed yourself based on the feeling you expressed, the feelings you’ve shared the most often, or look at a weekly and daily breakdown of the feelings you express. This offers insight into overall trends over time, or if there are specific days or times when you’re often feeling particularly high or low so you know what to plan for. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1755283043111-S4FI9PQHH5RVLDVOZOPB/Feelings+Trends.jpg Sutter Scout - To measure overall mental health, you are prompted to check in at specific intervals. Periodically you are reminded to take one of three standardized surveys to see how you are doing from a clinical perspective. These aren’t meant to replace a clinician, but to gauge progress and offer resources. Rugged Resilience Measure (RRM) measures how emotionally resilient and able to deal with adversity someone is. It indicates areas of life where someone is especially resilient or especially vulnerable. Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) assesses the level of depression someone is experiencing. It frames questions in terms of how often someone feels depression symptoms over the past two weeks. Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) measures the general level of anxiety someone is feeling on a regular basis. Depending on your responses, Scout would suggest you seek out mental health resources or the help of a clinician, in the event you are in a crisis. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/543b301de4b0dca077df4e81/1755283040407-CZC8EE3HD4832J37YZH9/Check-Ins.jpg Sutter Scout - After launch, Scout saw broad adoption from individuals and institutions. Across California and beyond, young adults and parents downloaded and used Scout for their personal mental health or to understand the kinds of challenges their children might be going through. Universities and high schools also eagerly adopted Scout as part of their mental health services to students. In 2024, Scout won a Webby Award in the category of Health, Wellness & Fitness Apps and Software. https://carldoescontent.com/about daily 0.75 2025-08-21 https://carldoescontent.com/contact daily 0.75 2025-09-09 https://carldoescontent.com/experience daily 0.75 2025-11-18 https://carldoescontent.com/home daily 1.0 2025-08-29