Minnesota Public Utilities Commission

Providing Safe, Reliable, & Affordable Energy for Minnesota.

Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Website Tridion CMS Government

Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Website + Videos

The PUC’s mission is to create and maintain a regulatory environment that ensures safe, adequate and efficient utility services as fair, reasonable rates consistent with State telecommunications and energy policies. One of the key functions of the PUC in performing this mission is to balance the private and public interests affected in each docket, and to make decisions that appropriately balance these interests in a manner "consistent with the public interest."

The Need

The PUC website is an important medium used to communicate relevant information to all consumers living in Minnesota. Internal and external feedback received from consumers and key stakeholders provided the business justification to support a complete redesign of the existing PUC website.

The Solution

As demand increased for completely seamless website experiences, we reevaluated PUC’s web strategies in order to meet these expectations. Throughout the project, we worked closely with various internal stakeholders comprised of executive, technical, and division workgroup teams. The end result was a newly designed and developed website that was designed with user experience front and center. The optimized, mobile-friendly website offers a customer-centric look and feel to make it easier to locate information and perform key user tasks. The new website is responsive and compatible with modern mobile devices and web interfaces.

Highlighted Services

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Roadmap & Planning

A project plan is a roadmap for stakeholders navigating the tasks and deliverables necessary for success. Our roadmaps often begin with a GANTT chart and clearly define goals and timelines. Stakeholders involved and impacted by the project are identified and their needs defined during the initial project planning process.
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User Experience Research & Testing

One of the most important goals of the PUC website redesign was to improve the usability of the website so that site users could more easily find content and perform desired tasks. To this end, we conducted user experience research in order to inform and create a new information architecture and navigation. We began by identifying key site information and tasks and conducted card sorting and personal interview exercises with external audiences.
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Wireframe, Prototype & Design

Wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes are developed in order to represent the structure of information on the website and to visualize the content and demonstrate the basic functionalities in a static way. Rapid prototypes allow for first impression testing and online, collaborative review of the site mockup. Finally, high-fidelity design concepts are developed that represent the data in a visually pleasing and interactive manner.
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Technical Support Services

Technical support services provide additional resources to tackle minor and major development needs. After the site had been launched, PUC needed Nighthawk to continue to work within their development server to fix miscellaneous bugs and add specifically targeted enhancements that would increase the longevity of the website. Once PUC approved all work done initially inside the dev server, we migrated the code to their live server, production site, and then retested to ensure everything was working correctly.