This Work Can't Wait

tl;dr

Lauren worked on an internal IDEO project to design and launch the "This Work Can't Wait" campaign website in just three weeks. The project, which doubled traffic and quadrupled conversions, showcased IDEO’s work in climate, inclusivity, and organizational transformation through a best-in-class, highly interactive, and fully accessible site.

How might we reintroduce IDEO to the world?

Client

IDEO internal

Context

This Work Can't Wait was a campaign that aimed to better articulate the work that IDEO has done, is capable of doing, and seeks to do more of in the future. Climate, inclusivity, and organizational transformation are all categories that are increasingly relevant in all sectors, and IDEO has a specific point of view in each.

This campaign not only culminated in a new website but was also interconnected with a dozen other initiatives from social media campaigns to climate-impact client dinners. When it came time to build the website, myself and four other interaction-focused designers and directors from Europe joined the team.

Goals

1. Build a best-in-class website

Our ambition was to create a site with fully customized animations and transitions that helped tell each story in a more compelling and interactive way.
This Work Can't Wait would be the IDEO homepage for at least 6 months, so it needed to be fresh, new, and exciting.
Internal projects, like launching a new company website, come with a lot of pressure. With this site we not only had to showcase our new and relevant work, we had to demonstrate that we know what we're doing. This site needed to be best-in-class.

2. Hit the deadline

For such an enormously visible project, no other outcome aside from "on time" would be acceptable.
Many other initiatives cascaded off of the website launch, so we needed to set our deadline and hit it.

High level layout of the "ready for development" designs. Since the site is powered by a CMS, the designs were not built around specific content, but instead would adapt to and accept all content coming in from the CMS.

Responsibilities

Web design & Webflow expert

Design translator

The five of us from Europe came onto the project as web and interaction design experts to help bring the project over the finish line. My contribution included introducing a standardized grid system to the existing designs, creating a web-friendly type ramp, translating the designs to multiple breakpoints, and structuring the content so it could fit into the CMS structure. The EU team also helped introduce a design review and approval process to help our globally distributed team make decisions and understand the status of each component.

Development support

In order to meet IDEO's rigorous standards for creative excellence, we hired a rockstar Webflow developer to partner with us on the build. I helped implement the structure of the site and built out the complicated CMS structure for the projects, while the freelancer did the the heavy lifting of developing and customizing the rest of the site. I also helped document and fix bugs during the QA process.

Solution

Build fast & exceed expectations

Getting this new website built and launched had a few false starts. However, after a reset, realignment, and deep breath, we were able to build and launch this fully customized Webflow site from start to finish within 3 weeks.

We built all the delightful interactions we needed to communicate our new stories, as well as added in a handful of fun and new interactions that weren't initially scoped in. Further, we ensured that the site was fully A11y compliant, from the color contrast ratios to properly tagged form elements to respecting native OS settings like Reduce Motion. Every detail at every breakpoint was thoughtfully designed and our launch was well received by clients and IDEOers alike.

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Before and after of the IDEO homepage and the TWCW homepage. We paid special attention to mobile so that all details felt purposeful, while enhancing desktop view with a cinematic experience. Before (left) and after (right).

The website navigation got a big visual design upgrade and we further optimized for the mobile experience. Before (left) and after (right).

Each story is full of dynamic details that create an immersive reading experience as you scroll through the page, without actually scroll-jacking. Before (left) and after (right).

Impact

Say hello to IDEO's new homepage

We launched the site globally at the beginning of August 2022 with fully integrated data and analytics tracking across the site. This launch also synchronized with IDEO's first ever coordinated social and email campaign. Since the launch of the This Work Can't Wait campaign our website traffic has doubled and our website conversions have quadrupled. In addition, the total number users, total page visits, number of clicks, number of pages visited, scroll depth, and time on page all significantly increased with this launch.

This initiative brought together dozens of people from across the company to build out the new campaign brand style, content, stories, design direction, website, and social and email campaigns in a way that has not been done before at IDEO.