Revamping IRC's website

I’ve been with IRC for several years now. I’m currently the lead on web development and design projects. Recently, I was asked to revamp IRC’s main site, which currently looks like this:

Blah.

In terms of design, there are so many things wrong with its current state. But that happens. It’s natural for a site to undergo design changes after a few years of living in the wild.

People, Process, and Performance

IRC is going through a small re-branding phase. They have a new logo and want to emphasize “People, Process, and Performance” throughout the business.

At a really high level, the work IRC does can be broken down into two categories: government work and non-government work. So there are two audiences to account for, and both have completely opposite goals.

Here’s my first stab at a simple redesign:

It’s essentially the same information restructured a little bit. I didn’t want to get too carried away before getting feedback, so I sent this out to management.

A quick recommendation was to group the four services with the title, “Software & Systems Engineering” to put more emphasis on that. It was suggested that this go above the services, which I didn’t necessarily agree with. But I put something together and sent it out. This was the change:

No way. I liked the “umbrella” grouping, just not from the top down. So I moved it underneath:

Much better. Now it acts as though it’s encompassing everything above. “IRC Engineers solutions.” Or at least, that’s the idea. On to the next issue… the latest news section.

The purpose of the blue strip is to draw attention. So it’s fair to say that the items within it should be of some significance. If a user only visits the site for 2 seconds, the blue strip should summarize IRC.

Having said that, the “latest news” section was simply off kilter. For one, we don’t update that nearly as often as new things happen within the company, so it grows stale. Not something you typically want to show off.

So I thought it would be more fitting to have a small explanation of IRC’s process. Initially it looked like this (gotta start somewhere):

Eh. It was better than news (maybe?), but it was all text. I wanted something more visual to drive home the point. Something that didn’t require so much brain power. So I created a little graphic, which looked like this:

The new logo is nice because it can act as a stamp. It’s good for proposals and so on, but it also worked out nicely for this graphic.

I was on the right track, but it still wasn’t quite right. I sent out the changes to see what management thought. Well, they liked the idea of graphically depicting our process, but didn’t like our end solution being a box. I understood that, but I was thinking more along the lines of a “packaged solution,” but what can you do?

So what would depict a good “end solution” for IRC? Really, I just needed to take the first step and give it some structure. Changing “notes” to “ideas” led me toward making step one more chaotic, which then helped with showing that chaos in order in step three. Long story short, I ended up with this:

I was happy with the result, and so was management.

The next issue dealt with the blandness of the content below the blue strip. Everything was gray (to target those “government” viewers). I knew it could be better. That area needed some distinction, as it was explaining the core of what IRC does.

After some tweaking, I came up with this:

By extending the umbrella and giving it a background, it pops a little more. It flows better with the overall design, and it gives the deserved attention to the company’s services. Oh, and I also added boxes around the check marks. They now fill their void a little better.

Management approved, but it was recommended that I somehow illustrate the services graphically, like some of the other pieces of the design. Well, that’s not as easy as it sounds, but this is what I came up with:

I like the placement of the images, but whether or not those are the actual images is still open for debate.

Below is the final design, as it stands today:

It’s a lot better than the original, in my humble opinion. Of course, I’m somewhat biased :-)

Conclusion

Unfortunately, I don’t think this design will go live. There were a few concerns that it played toward the wrong audience a little too much, so it looks like a few things will have to change. I’ll post more about the 2nd round of the IRC redesign as it happens.

As always, feedback is welcome.