Connected Website ReDesign
When we were faced with the need to redesign our own website to meet new accessibility guidelines, we decided to start from scratch. This way, we could infuse accessibility into our new designs rather than searching our site for low contrast text styles, auditing the header hierarchy of each page, and renaming our links and buttons to provide clear interactions and information. Not only was this a necessary opportunity to enhance the accessibility of our website, but it was the perfect chance to update and elevate our brand.
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It all started with prioritizing why we were redesigning the website. Two reasons popped out, to make our site accessible to all and to update the brand.
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I designed all the pages using a mixture of ~20 blocks to ensure consistency and usability working closely with a web development agency to ensure design/eng compatibility.
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Worked closely with developers throughout the building process allowed for the best collaboration and solving problems as we came across them.
Bridging the gap between developers and designers
At Connected, the teams perform as a cross-disciplinary function where we break down silos in order to build better products. When this redesign project kicked off, it was important to me to maintain this model with our external developers, Day Shift Digital. As I mentioned under the Connector Spotlight, from the very beginning, the process was a highly collaborative one, in which everyone’s concerns and opinions were brought forward before anything was finalized. Here are some examples of decisions that were made with both myself (the designer) and the developers in mind:
Avoid excessive spacing rules (have all margins and padding be divisible by a specific number),
Design two layouts (desktop & tablet) so that the flow to HD desktop and mobile would be natural rather than constraining,
Provide a style guide to streamline the development process and avoid extra time in the design QA period, and
Provide developer notes for each page.
