Lauren Issa Paul

Developer

Featured projects

VCU Innovation Gateway

Visit the VCU Innovation Gateway website »

Role: Technical lead, design system strategy, development, CMS integration, and Web accessibility remediator

Launch date: June 2018

This website was the new digital home for VCU Innovation Gateway. My team included a fellow developer, two content specialists, and one designer. We worked closely with the client to realize the business needs.

I was the technical lead on this project and the sole developer for the Technology Marketplace section. The goal for this section was to translate a library of inaccessible PDFs — for their technologies available for licensing — into accessible Web pages (example) optimized for searching, sorting, and viewing. This data is entered once in the CMS and outputs as a JSON file that the multiple views use for display.

Screenshot of the VCU Innovation Gateway website

VCU and VCU Health Annual Reports (12 websites)

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Role: Technical lead and development

Once a year, our team produced print and Web annual reports for Virginia Commonwealth University and VCU Health. From 2011 to 2018, I was lead developer on 12 of these annual reports.

I worked with an integrated team, sharing ideas for both the print and the Web pieces. We met from the beginning to discuss the theme, the stories and the imagery of the annual report, and then the Web team met for focused brainstorming and prototyping sessions.

There are two different audiences for the annual reports, and there are two parts that speak to each audience: 1) The stories celebrate the success of the organization, instilling pride for those who are part of it, and 2) the facts and figures provide an overall health of the organization, information most valuable for our leadership audience.

The Web team typically consisted of a writer, a visual designer, and a lead developer. These websites were built outside of a CMS using HTML5, CSS, javascript and GSAP.

Awards:

Virginia Commonwealth University Annual Report 2014-15:

VCU Medical Center 2012 Annual Report website:

  • 2013-14 — CASE District III — Award of Excellence in the Magazine or Publication Rendering for Tablet or Mobile Technology category
Screenshot of the 2016-17 VCU University Annual Report

VCU Division of Strategic Enrollment Management design system (16 websites)

Role: Technical lead, design system strategy, development, CMS integration, and Web accessibility remediator

Launch date: March 2017

A full design system that was strategized, designed and built by a four-person team. I worked with a content strategist, a copywriter, and a visual designer to build this design system in the university CMS, TerminalFour. The system provided a consistent user experience for the sixteen department websites under SEM. It also provided a library of shared components for easier content management.

One programmable layout served different experiences depending on page type and components used, keeping the back-end of the system tidy and easy to maintain.

Brent Monseur posing in front of a night sky backdrop and a hospital bed

VCU Make it real.

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Role: Technical lead, design strategy, and development

Launch date: March 2017

A landing site for the 2017 VCU Make it Real paid media campaign. This website featured stories from the VCU community, provided links to VCU program and culture information, and prompted the user to sign up for more information.

Working closely with the visual design and marketing folks on the VCU Make it Real team, I helped the creative direction come to life, iterating ideas to the final design with sketches and prototypes.

Brent Monseur posing in front of a night sky backdrop and a hospital bed

VCU Foundation

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Role: Technical lead, design strategy, and development

Launch date: May 2017

This website provides information on VCU Foundation. Here you can learn how to donate, what your donation supports, and who to contact to discuss opportunities.

Working in a three-person team with one copywriter and one visual designer, I provided responsive design and CMS implementation strategy while bringing their vision to life. The design features full-width images and a subtle parallax effect.

Award:

Screenshot of the VCU Foundation website

Other projects

Presentations

  • CSS Grid and T4 (Aug. 2018)
    This PDF is a talk I gave at the August 2018 VCU Web User Group about using CSS Grid for layouts in the university's CMS, T4. The topic was about how CSS Grid could improve performance of the CMS, as well as the user experience for the CMS content editors. The audience for this talk was the VCU T4 development and designer community, as well as T4 content editors.
  • Accessibility remediation example (Sept. 2017)
    As part of a larger presentation on Web accessilibity remediation, I presented details on the work I did on to bring a design system of 16 websites to WCAG 2.0 (Level AA) compliance.