David Suzuki.org

The need for two-way dialogue in our web presence was identified early on in this long process of designing a new website for the Foundation. Our community wanted us to make it easy for them to do the right thing and to facilitate the sharing of their thoughts and ideas. Answering the biggest question, "What can I do?", we launched a beta website in November, 2009, offering a three-step, cyclical approach: Learn, Do, Share. Learn about relevant issues, take meaningful action, and share your stories. In early workshops and throughout the beta phase this approach resonated with our community, but the site structure was too flat and the navigation lacked conviction and coherence. We needed a new architecture, and with it we officially relaunched davidsuzuki.org on April 15, 2010. The new French language version launched May 30.

Analysing and categorizing an immense amount of data was no small task. A thorough content audit, card sort and usability testing allowed us to discover what hierarchy and nomenclature made sense for users. User testing proved some of our beliefs and disproved others, but told us we were headed in the right direction. A design even cleaner than the beta version helped to pull it all together with a tighter grid, more consistent typography, and refined colour palette. In the back-end I allowed for greater flexibility within very set — and fewer — templates, retaining better consistency between similar types of content. More thoughtful, standardized content areas lend themselves to better navigation. It was also imperative for pages to remain uncluttered amid unique content from staff.

The intent of the design is to let the content speak and breathe, let the fresh images (particularly of people) be the primary focus. The warm palette emphasizes optimism, and balances sophistication with our organic, earthy personality.

The Foundation's original concept was to produce a Nature Challenge website that had at its core a similar user engagement model as our new site. Design mockups began with that intention and evolved as internal decisions shifted, incorporating the ideas of the Nature Challenge site into a new site for the organization itself. The design was then gradually refined and simplified, then refined again as our content strategy and wireframes evolved to reflect staff, expert and user feedback.

This is my first site of this scale and with so many content contributors. I have had the opportunity to do visual research and strategy and to make decisions as if it were my personal project. Being an in-house designer had its advantages in terms of how it informed my understanding of the organization's character, staff and goals, and how existing work relationships facilitated success. As a staff member, I felt ownership which further enhanced my commitment to this project.

My roles: design, programming and website administration in English and French; project planning; assistance with strategy, wireframing and site architecture development; staff and volunteer training. Built with Movable Type.

View website »