User:Virginia Kiwi/JESS3

JESS3 is a creative interactive agency based in the Washington, D.C. area, specializing in web design, branding, social media marketing, infographics and data visualization. The firm is noted for its work with clients including NASA, Nike and Facebook, as well as independent projects such as The Conversation Prism and The Ex-Blocker.

Background
Founded by web designer Jesse Thomas in 2007, JESS3 is led by Thomas along with president Leslie Bradshaw. In 2009, JESS3 became Mashable's design partner on projects including their iPhone application. As of 2010, the firm claims 15 full time employees, with more than 100 freelance partners, and offices in the United Kingdom. Clients of JESS3 have included Nike, MySpace, Intel and Microsoft.

Notable projects
In August 2008, JESS3 designed a series of websites related to the 2008 presidential election for the Washington-based C-SPAN public affairs network, for which they received a Webby Award nomination in 2009. In addition to the election websites, JESS3 also developed the C-SPAN Video Library, which launched in March 2010. The website provides access to the digitized C-SPAN video archives of over 160,000 hours of programming and won an ACC Golden Beacon award on September 16, 2010.

In July 2010, JESS3 collaborated with Facebook on a project called Stories to help celebrate the social networking site's 500 millionth profile. The application allows users to share stories about how Facebook has impacted their lives, sortable by geographical location or by topic.

JESS3 has served as social media adviser to NASA on multiple geosocial networking projects. In October 2010, JESS3 coordinated a joint project between NASA and Gowalla, creating NASA-related items for the service's users to acquire, as well as a special NASA pin. The first 100 users to earn the pin also received a JESS3-designed special edition map, "Search for the Moon Rocks". The same month, JESS3 organized a partnership between NASA and Foursquare to engineer the first geosocial check-in from space. On October 22, 2010, International Space Station (ISS) commander Douglas H. Wheelock checked in to Foursquare from the ISS and unlocked a new "NASA Explorer" badge. In addition, a customized NASA Foursquare homepage was launched which provides information about locations of interest to the U.S. space program. Other projects JESS3 has developed for NASA include their "Buzzroom" website, which tracks NASA-related tweets, plus related images and videos.

JESS3 Labs
In June 2010, JESS3 debuted the "Black Oil Plug-In" for Firefox that renders any mention of BP, Transocean, the Gulf Oil Spill and other names and phrases into a dripping, black splotch within a user's browser.

That same month, the company also introduced The Ex-Blocker, which enables users to prevent their web browser from showing their ex-lovers' activities and posts on various websites. The application was profiled in The Globe and Mail, mentioned during a segment on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and received media coverage internationally, including an articles in Glamour Magazine UK. over 8,000 people have installed the Ex-Blocker plug-in.

Data visualization
JESS3 has created and co-sponsored numerous visual design projects. A project titled The Conversation Prism elaborately maps methods of communication across numerous online forums. The design appeared in an article about information graphics in the July/August 2009 issue of Communication Arts. In the spring of 2009, the agency designed a diagram called "The Twitterverse" with Brian Solis that outlines the expanding network of applications that function with the popular web tool.

In February 2010, the company released a video titled "The State of the Internet" on Vimeo, which included a series of infographics outlining the rise of the internet and other information regarding popular social networking and media sites such as YouTube and Twitter. As of May 2010, the video had been viewed online over 1 million times.

Other projects
For the 2008 US Presidential Election, through agency partner New Media Strategies, JESS3 designed the website AnOrangeAmerica.com and launched it on Election Day. The site visualized election-related tweets about Barack Obama and John McCain as they happened, with data directly from Twitter's API. In June 2010, JESS3 developed a microsite for "My Discovery", the Discovery Channel's 25th anniversary program.