



THE CHALLENGE
The Center for Discovery (TCFD) stands as a beacon of multifaceted care and innovative research for individuals with disabilities. To reach their target audience, they needed a robust digital platform capable of illustrating their revolutionary contributions to the persons they support and the local community.
OUR APPROACH
Initiating a comprehensive series of discovery activities, we discerned the aspirations of stakeholders, identified inherent challenges, and assessed the current technological infrastructure. Understanding their content editors’ desire for more versatility in curating custom pages, we implemented a component-based system that enhances storytelling and highlights program offerings beyond their previous basic text editors and inline images.
THE RESULTS
A sophisticated WordPress multisite network tailored to accommodate TCFD’s dynamic digital ecosystem. This redesign ensures seamless navigation between the primary website and its associated microsites while providing their team with the design tools to craft engaging stories that resonate with potential donors, policymakers, and researchers who want to support people with disabilities.
Transforming the lives of those disabilities
Spread over 1,500 acres in the Mid-Hudson Region, The Center for Discovery® (TCFD) is a prominent research and specialty institution providing residential, medical, clinical, and special education programs to children and adults with disabilities.
Attracting individuals worldwide, TCFD is renowned for its cutting-edge care and pioneering research addressing an array of complex conditions. With its legacy of innovation in curriculum development, program inception, and assistive technology, The Center has consistently spearheaded transformative breakthroughs and life-changing opportunities.
Moving forward
Although TCFD has a rich history spanning nearly seven decades, its former website fell short in effectively conveying the organization’s transformative work and societal impact. Challenges related to user navigation and accessibility obstructed access to critical information, such as details about programs, research endeavors, and resources for families. The culmination of these online obstacles adversely affected the ability to attract in-person visits to The Center.
Following our initial meeting with their team, we were chosen to redesign the organization’s website to establish a digital foundation capable of evolving alongside the organization.
Uncovering key insights
Our strategists conducted a discovery phase to ensure our recommended solution would best fit within The Center’s existing infrastructure. We took inventory of all existing content, content types, quantity, and distribution and analyzed the site’s metrics to uncover visitor traffic and patterns. During this process, we found that most visits to the site were on mobile devices, which indicated that to meet user’s needs, changes to enhance the mobile experience were of the utmost priority.
We also conducted a survey and facilitated a virtual workshop with The stakeholder team to better understand their challenges and future objectives. Feedback from these exercises emphasized the critical need for a content restructure to authentically portray TCFD’s diverse facets and ensure they’re readily accessible to online visitors. Moreover, the content editors expressed a desire for greater flexibility in storytelling to encourage donations.
Bolstering engagement through design
Our UI designers got to work on incorporating additional design elements to help extend the organization’s existing brand and strengthen its visual identity. Some of these additions included patterns for page backgrounds like a grid of dots, radiating lines, and swirls.
We utilized image masks (cutting out backgrounds from images) to create dynamic areas of photos overlaid onto color fields or other background images, like in the homepage hero area. Since this approach only works with specific photo compositions, our team sifted through TCFD’s extensive photo archives to identify suitable examples. We then established templates, guidelines, and processes for their content editors to create image masks of their own.
Finally, while orange is TCFD’s foundational color, its extended palette includes shades of blue, violet, teal, and gray. To further enrich the brand’s online expression, we designated these colors to specific sections on the website, each representing different aspects of the organization. Furthermore, we empowered content editors with the tools to infuse components and design elements with this varied color range.
Empowering content creators
A pivotal aspect of the redesign was equipping their team with the tools to effortlessly produce compelling content. We implemented a component-based system that elevates storytelling capabilities and emphasizes program offerings, transcending basic text editors and inline images to meet this goal. The system utilizes custom post types and rich visual components like videos, hover cards, and calls to action (among others) to maintain design uniformity while allowing content to be shared between the different sites.
Industries
- Nonprofit
Capabilities
- Accessibility
- Brand Guidelines & Standardization
- Information Architecture
- WordPress
Project Information
Client:
The Center for Discovery
Location:
P.O. Box 840 Harris, NY 12742
Date:
July 02, 2022
Website:
https://thecenterfordiscovery.org/