Website Modernization Proposal
Prepared for Public Utility District No. 1 of Pend Oreille County | RFP 26-508 | July 2026
Prepared for Public Utility District No. 1 of Pend Oreille County | RFP 26-508 | July 2026
Dear Members of the Pend Oreille PUD Selection Committee,
Your website is a service counter — and it's open when the counter isn't. When a customer needs to pay a bill at 9 p.m., report an outage from a phone in a low-signal corner of the county, or figure out which of your four systems they belong to, popud.org is the staff member who answers. That's the project we're proposing to build: not a brochure, but the front counter for a utility that has been serving this county since 1936.
Our approach is defined by two commitments. The first is a methodology rooted in evidence, not guesswork. We use specialized user-path mapping, customer task analysis, and behavioral research — including webcam eye-tracking studies of how ordinary people actually read tiered pricing — to eliminate navigational friction and build clear, direct pathways for residential customers, commercial and industrial customers, and the community members, job seekers, and regulatory bodies who come to the District for public information.
The second is being your most intentional partner. We don't act as an outside vendor; we integrate into your team. That includes traveling to Newport at our own cost for the project kickoff, and returning on a committed cadence throughout the engagement.
You'll also find us unusually direct in this proposal — about what we're actually proposing for SmartHub, about certifications we do and don't hold, and about the limits of what any vendor can honestly promise on legal compliance. We'd rather tell you exactly what we deliver than write confident language around what we can't.
We certify that we have carefully examined all RFP documents, fully understand your objectives, and are confident in delivering a modern, service-oriented digital experience for customers across Pend Oreille County.
We look forward to hearing from you,
A holistic philosophy that ensures our work delivers maximum impact and integrity — from first research to final launch.
We engage in continuous learning and creative-thinking exercises to build stamina and master our craft — so every project is delivered with peak efficiency and performance.
We embrace curiosity, empathy, and strategic questioning to ensure the final design resonates deeply and ethically with the user.
We apply rigorous, scalable, secure technical solutions — platforms that aren't only beautiful but are engineered for long-term compliance, staff maintainability, and security.
Being intellectual is not enough in a creative setting. Knowledge is being right, but wisdom is being right at the right time, in the right way, about the right thing.
Creativity takes vulnerability and curiosity. A fight to be right no matter the cost is corrupt business — no longer a creative endeavor. Good creativity is not about me, it is about us.
Having an idea is an insufficient end for the creative. The honest creative wrestles with ideas until the right idea proves itself. This is not easy work, but it is honest work.
The word empathy itself came into being for the sake of art. Without empathy — an insistent relationship with the audience — creativity becomes imbalanced self-indulgence.
Many treat creativity as a space to present an answer. The creative should be the one who has bigger questions than they have answers for — and invites others into that same questioning.
Creativity is about the relationship between creator and audience. Any unethical attempt to manipulate the audience or the truth is a failure of the creative — not art, but gas-lighting dressed up.
We propose a seven-person team with proven collaboration across multiple creative projects — deep experience in every stage of production, from planning and design to development, WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, and post-launch support.
Mox is committed to keeping this core team intact through launch. Should a team member become unavailable, we will immediately provide a replacement of equal or greater expertise at no disruption to the project timeline or budget, subject to the District’s final approval.
We name your review points explicitly rather than implying them, so your staff and commissioners can plan around them: information architecture and sitemap review at the end of Phase 1; formal design approval at the end of Phase 2; a staging beta walkthrough in Phase 4; and final launch sign-off in Phase 5. Phase 1 runs four weeks because four separately financed systems and three elected commissioners are more stakeholder surface than a single-service organization — and Phase 3 absorbs the Thanksgiving-through-New-Year period honestly rather than pretending it won’t affect either team.
We are conscious that every dollar in this proposal is a ratepayer dollar that three elected commissioners will be asked to account for in a public meeting — and we have structured our pricing accordingly. This is a fixed-fee, not-to-exceed investment of $75,900 for the complete required scope, with all contingency included. Preferred and future-focused capabilities are priced separately below, so the District decides what to add, and when, with full visibility into what each item costs.
Every dollar is tied directly to a defined project phase and milestone. Rates follow our standard card: $250/hr for strategy, research, design, development, and copywriting; $150/hr for production design; $100/hr for meetings and project coordination. Milestone billing: 25% at signing, 25% at design approval, 25% at staging beta, 25% at launch.
A $7,500 post-launch optimization reserve — approximately 11% of the $68,400 core production cost — is included in the total for the ninety days following launch: real-world data tracking, follow-up customer interviews, and refinements based on how your community actually uses the site. If the data shows fewer refinements are needed, that portion is simply not spent. Ongoing hosting and support are available on 1-, 3-, and 5-year terms (full support from $350/month on the five-year term, including an annual UX review). All travel to Newport is incurred by Mox — never passed to the District.
Because of our creative philosophy, ethical values, and collaborative approach, our roster has been able to work with these incredible organizations.
What we would be building is not really a website. It is the front counter for a utility that has been serving this county since 1936 — the public record of how a community-owned utility spends its customers’ money, and the first thing a business considering Pend Oreille County looks at when it wants to know what power and broadband will cost. Those are consequential things, and they deserve to be built by people who take them seriously. Thank you for considering our team.
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