Arts and Humanities Research Council Website Design

Challenge

The Arts and Humanities Research Council is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. They are a national funding agency supporting both arts and humanities research, using public funding to fund research amongst one-quarter of the United Kingdom's research population.

We were tasked in creating a new website design and ensuring the design would be compatible and take advantage of all the new features of the Council's new CMS, Mura. As well being responsible for the design, we were required to conduct the Mura integration work.

The design needed to improve navigation, improve accessibility for disabled users,  be optimised for mobile and tablet devices and  improve searching for, accessing and consuming information across the website.

Thinking

Our approach needed a careful examination of the old website design and a plan was made to evolve the design whilst retaining familiarity so as not to upset AHRC's many regular visitors.

Working closely with the Communication team we worked hard on the user experience of the website to ensure all of the usability objectives were met.

A broad range of designs were created and through diligent testing, feedback and iteration we were able to hone a final style which significantly moved the design forward, whilst retaining the familiarity required.

The new design offers a wide range of improvements including accessibility for disabled users, clearer and more consistent navigation and a home page with access to a range of rich and engaging content, including news items, feature articles, case studies, videos, podcasts and the AHRC twitter feed. Further improvements included quicker access to open funding calls, improved search functionality and an email form so that users can sign up to regular email alerts.

Result

The resulting design has given AHRC:

•  a website which has a mobile and tablet optimised design; the size and format of the website will alter depending on the device a visitor is using, making it easier to read and easier to navigate when users are on the move or at their desktop

•  is optimised to load quickly for users accessing the website over slow connection or accessing via mobile networks a simplified  site structure to make navigation easier

•  has made documents more accessible for all visitors

•  significantly improved search functionality enabling faster and more accurate search results.