BOCA RATON, FLORIDA, December 6, 2022 —Daruma Tech, a client of the Global Ventures entrepreneur support program at the Research Park at Florida Atlantic University® and developers of custom software solutions for the transportation, hospitality, and other specialty sectors, has secured a contract for an ambitious website overhaul for the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency (Palm Beach TPA). The project involves a complete reorganization and rebuild of the complex site, along with a refreshed graphic design and more user-friendly front-end and back-end user interfaces.
A robust, easy-to-navigate website is mission critical for Palm Beach TPA, a federally mandated metropolitan planning organization serving Palm Beach County, Florida. The agency is charged with bringing together county commissioners, city officials, seaport commissioners, and transportation professionals to implement a safe, efficient, connected, and multi-modal transportation system for the region. The agency’s planning responsibilities involve everything from bike paths to seaports, and at any given time the agency is actively seeking community input on dozens of current or proposed projects. Thus, Palm Beach TPA needs an intuitively organized website that allows a diverse range of users to find and submit time-sensitive information easily. To ensure the site is accessible to all stakeholders, the site also needs to be ADA compliant, multilingual, and able to load data-heavy pages quickly.
Identifying the best strategies for meeting these needs required close collaboration between Daruma Tech and Palm Beach TPA, said Susan Erickson of Daruma Tech. “To deliver the best possible solution, we needed to understand who their users are and how they interact with the site,” Erickson said. “So we held several listening sessions with Palm Beach TPA to learn about their wants, needs, and challenges. We also reviewed a number of options with them and made sure they understood their pros and cons. This enabled us to organize and build the site in a way that makes logical sense for their users and technical sense on our end.”
The Palm Beach TPA site is Daruma Tech’s latest advance into the transportation sector, following on the heels of several other high-impact transportation-related projects. Daruma Tech’s multi-year website contracts with the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, another regional transportation planning agency in Florida, was a significant reason Daruma Tech was tapped for the Palm Beach TPA web site. Daruma Tech’s other transportation-centered projects include a mobile ticketing and trip-planning app for Tri-Rail, the regional rail system operated by the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority; and U-Ride, a mobile app commissioned by FAU’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning to help commuting students identify their best public transportation options.
“Technology for the transportation sector needs to meet a uniquely demanding set of technical and human factors challenges,” Erickson said. “Daruma Tech’s experiences in this sector and understanding of its stakeholders gives us an edge when we take on new transportation projects. And knowing that we’re also helping improve the quality of life in the communities our clients serve — including FAU — is a big plus.”