Case Study: We Are Healers
The Native American Center for Health Professions needed to find a communications tool that would inspire young Native American students to enter the healthcare field. Earthling worked with the creative design team of Art & Sons to implement a web-based user experience that harnessed the power of video and avoided a clunky interface (pop ups, buttons, awkward navigation) that can interrupt a fluid digital experience.
CHALLENGE
Visionary Website Design Needs
Native American communities face striking health disparities from other populations. A major contributing factor is the dearth of healthcare providers that serve these communities. The Native American Center for Health Professions (NACHP) seeks to enhance recruitment of Native students to the healthcare field, and wanted to find a digital solution to help them reach high school and undergraduate students with a powerful message delivered with an innovative format.
A standard institutional site template didn’t offer the kind of rich, immersive experience NACHP was after so they turned to the group of incredibly creative design professionals at Art & Sons to come up with a storytelling platform that would capture the interest and imagination of a younger audience. The final design was a one-of-a-kind digital experience that relied heavily on video and smooth navigation, but they needed a development team to engineer their complex vision.
SOLUTION
Push WordPress CMS to Deliver Immersive Storytelling Experience
We called on our expert WordPress developers to dive in and build a fully customized platform able to display full screen video content that didn’t depend on clunky pop-ups or awkward navigation to move through the content, pause videos, immerse oneself in a story, and re-engage with a beautiful video.
Site visitors are immediately drawn into an intimate conversation with the individuals showcased on the site. Earthling customized a Vimeo video player to display a beautiful full screen HD video while minimizing the player controls to brings the viewer directly into the daily life of the Native health care worker featured in the story.
Users can jump from video to narrative text, with the stop screen floating seamlessly into a background image, and then back to video in one elegant and immersive experience.
RESULTS
More Diverse Health Care Profession Population
Even though NACHP knew they had something special when they launched the site, they didn’t imagine how influential it would be toward garnering increased interest in health care professions among young Native Americans. Hundreds of young students and advocates have inquired about the program and NACHP outreach coordinators are very pleased to have this effective tool with which to reach their target audience and increase the interest in health professions among Native American Communities.
