SmartLab Website
Project Overview
The Challenge
With the design update to the SmartLab platform, it was time to update the SmartLab website. The current website was a dated one-page design that did not showcase the platform and its offerings effectively. The focus of this project was to create a completely new website that mirrored the platform rebrand whilst also demonstrating everything that SmartLab has to offer in a clear and concise way. The biggest challenge for this project was communicating exactly what the platform was capable of offering to audiences who had never experienced it before.
The Solution
By identifying the key elements of the platform that needed to be highlighted, we were able to create a clear structure for the new website. Leading two junior designers in the collaborative ideation stage, we were able to design page templates and key components that could be used throughout. These templates and components allowed for the website design features to remain consistent without becoming repetitive. As a result, we created a very detailed and refreshing website that is currently in use when showcasing the new SmartLab platform.
Development Research
It had been a long time since the last SmartLab website was designed and it no longer accurately reflected all of the offerings of the platform, as well as being dated visually. Since this version of the website had been built, the platform had grown exponentially and deserved better representation.
It was important that we looked at this design to see if there was any information we needed to carry over to the new design and to also evaluate where this website was failing.
From this research, we were able to ascertain that at a basic level, the new design should -
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Be multipage to organise information
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Use the full SmartLab colour palette
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Not be so text heavy
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Use more interesting imagery
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Feel more engaging
Creating the journey
The platform has such extensive features that we needed to create a clear web-flow structure to follow. This allowed us to see how the information and features of SmartLab would be presented and distributed on the website.
Alongside the lead designer, we put together this template for the junior designers to show the basic layout and hierarchies that we wanted all of the pages to follow. We then all worked on designing our own interpretations of this template to establish the best way to visually display some of these features.
My designs were chosen from this stage as the foundations for this website. Once we settled on an overarching layout for the pages and a set style for the headings, we were able to create a gallery of key components that we could pick from when pulling out platform features.
Through the use of a bright colour palette and open layout, the website effectively reflects the new design of the platform and is a very light and playful look at what SmartLab provides. Without giving too much away about the intricacies of the services available, it is a clear showcase of all that the SmartLab suite of products have to offer.
