The Innovate Project, run by the University of Sussex, explores youth, risk and complexity, and builds new knowledge about the processes of innovation in social care.
The brief
We were approached by The Innovate Project following a previous website we’d delivered for another department of the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. As an academic research project, they needed a website to inform and educate their audience about the research findings throughout the lifespan of the 3-year project.
The challenges
One of the challenges we faced was designing this academic website to look and feel quite different from our usual yoga/wellbeing sites, whilst ensuring we presented the client’s content in a clear and structured way.
With very few images to work with, we needed to rely on well-designed layouts to create a visually appealing site. Using the colour palette from their existing logo, we were able to pull out the bright orange and yellow to create accent colours for elements such as buttons, icons, link text and coloured panels. This helped bring the site to life, without the need for lots of graphics or images.
We also needed to build in lots of flexibility for the client to add their own content later on, as they’d need to continually update the website as they move through the project. We added various holding text, as well as a sign-up form for their upcoming events, and sent them lots of tutorial videos showing them how to update the site themselves.
The process
During our kickoff workshop, we gained a clear understanding of our client’s requirements for the new website, and agreed a sensible site structure with the user journey in mind. Once the client had sent over their content, we got to work designing the page layouts around this content.
As there are no products or services to offer from this site, the main call-to-action (CTA) is for visitors to sign up to the mailing list to receive updates about the project. We featured the sign-up form on its own page and added links to this from several prominent locations, including the homepage, the footer, the events sidebar, the contact page and most other key pages across the site.
The results
By working closely with the client every step of the way, we were able to deliver a visually striking, clearly organised website that meets the client’s requirements perfectly. Michelle, the project’s Principal Investigator, was very pleased with the results and we’re excited to see how the website evolves along with the project.
Client feedback
“We are delighted with the look and shape of the website. Thank you for working so collaboratively with us to clarify what our ethos and aims were so that the website really reflects our vision and speaks to our stakeholder audiences. You were really patient with us when we were trying to work things out and explained everything really well. We would highly recommend you to others.”
– Michelle Lefevre