Refreshing a Highly Trafficked Website That Had Not Been Touched For A Decade
Timeframe
Early 2008 through mid 2011.
Role
Complete overhaul of a highly trafficked web-based genealogy tool. Evangelized new identity and design standards throughout the organization. My role included wireframe & visual design, prototyping, user testing, front-end development (HTML, CSS), and WordPress development.
FamilySearch
The FamilySearch web presence began in the late 1990’s. When I arrived in early 2008, the overall look had remained almost untouched for the 10+ years of its existence.
Working with the Design Lead we began bouncing design concepts back and forth. One concept of mine stood out from the rest, a graphic with a silhouetted family walking amongst a treeline and mountainscape background. The design lead grabbed my files, worked them into the homepage mockup, and our iconic look was born.
The design lead grabbed my files, worked them into the homepage mockup, and our iconic look was born.
Some further adjustments, a bit a parallax scrolling, and voila.
Once the visual style was in a good place I began on frontend implementation. I built a working prototype with HTML and CSS, then worked the prototype into a Wordpress template. When engineering changed from WordPress to Drupal for web content I turned my HTML/CSS work over and ceased working on code.
Spreading the brand
First we unveiled the new brand at an organization all-hands meeting. Here is a PDF of the slide deck that was shared.
We circulated a simple style guide for every team to have. We kept things short and simple to lower resistance to the change and avoid overwhelming non-designers with information.
After brand launch, my role was help to carry it forward.
Sub-pages and other resources like the FS Wiki and Learning Catalog.
Special record sets and social outreach.
Freshly indexed collections frequently became available to the general public thanks to the large army of volunteers digitizing and indexing the vast collections of records held in the FamilySearch vault.
Occasionally the org would highlight a special collection either due to newly available content or commemorating historical events. I designed special landing pages and supplementary content for these special occasions.
Another piece I worked on was support for FamilySearch’s initial social media communities.
Social Media community support.
Special landing pages to highlight newly released collections.
