Overview
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The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution, dedicated to contributing to a future of better health care based on the unique genetic makeup of each individual. The Laboratory is also the world's source for more than 7,000 strains of genetically defined mice, is home of the mouse genome database and is an international hub for scientific courses, conferences, training and education.
The site in the past was geared towards users who wanted to purchase research mice. Unfortunately, the great research that the Jackson Laboratory conducts took a back seat. Because the Jackson Laboratory conducts cutting edge research, they wanted to change their site to focus on promoting their research in order to appeal to a broader audience that in return would be interested in potentially donating or purchasing their research mice. |
Project Needs:
User Experience Design Role: Experience Lead Activities:
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The Challenge |
Create a site that projects the JAX message while staying out of the way of their users. The site also needed to be extensible and flexible as the organization grew their content and added more products and services.
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The Approach
Data Driven |
Consider Heuristics |
Understand the Brand |
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Understanding typical click paths and funnels for purchase and for finding content in order to make improvements that can increase conversions.
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Understanding where the site fails to help users meet their goals in order to find ways to make improvements.
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Understanding who Jackson Laboratory is as an organization in an effort to help them better portray their brand.
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The Vision
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Digital User Experience Design
Content Strategy |
Because research content is such a complex subject it was important to really help separate the information into lay terms and then more scientific terms for those who wanted to learn more. The organization also had a hard time finding ways to cross promote content across the laboratory so we created a detailed taxonomy. We also worked closely with the content team to help streamline content creation and approvals by creating governance recommendations.
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Navigation
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We wanted to provide users with distinct entry points that help users quickly complete frequent tasks and goals. Because the organization is founded on research, we also created a section that allows users to view various research topics that aggregate content related to a particular topic into a single view. These pages helped researchers quickly find information about a topic of interest.
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Layout and Interaction
We wanted to provide a modular system that allows the business to easily place content throughout the site and make it easy for components to stack as the user views the information on different view ports. On the homepage we ensured there were key entry points into the major sections of the site. We made sure items were touch friendly with clear touch and hover states. We made sure we utilized the various touch gestures such as swiping. We used scoped search to allow users to easily and quickly either search on the site or just for mice strains. We used pinned navigation to help users efficiently navigate through the site. We used large images and graphics to create an engaging site that quickly allows users to understand the information they are viewing. We tested the site to see how well it performed with users and to identify opportunities for improvement.
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Lashanda Hodge | Resume | Mobile: (919) 272-5661
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