During our stakeholder session it came to light that ACEEE hd three main goals going into this re-design:
1. Increase the number of downloads on their PDF papers.
2. Improve the search experience.
3. Highlight the well-researched work of each of ACEEE's internal teams.
I conducted an analysis of their Google Analytics, HotJar heat map survey's of their most trafficked pages, and created a competitor analysis to determine our baseline for ACEEE's new brand positioning.
ACEEE's old architecture tried a portal system to funnel their audience down specific information tracks. However, this system proved to be too confusing and was left unused by almost all of their users. The system I created promotes their resources and breaks down their organization by program team which provide avenues to discover information in addition to an inside look at ACEEE's organization structure.
I designed three mood boards as the initial step into the design process. This exercise helped my team construct 3 distinct personalities based on our initial stakeholder conversations. Their chosen direction guided my decisions as I designed their new visual language.
Ultimately the ACEEE team chose to pursue a corporate look and feel with an emphasis on strong lines. With our direction chosen I was able to confidently move forward with the designs.
ACEEE hosts 7 massive conferences a year, attended by a wide variety of industry people from researchers, to students, and lawmakers. The conference pages draw a large audience and an important initial touchpoint for lots of new users. We wanted to provide the ACEEE with enough atomic components to develop beautiful page layouts well into the future.
Following the atomic design rules, I broke down the visual design into its most basic components. My development team found these documents extremely helpful to keep styling consistent across each content type and it sets us up to make changes down the road without having to comb through pages of code.
