Boosting access to cancer research with user-driven web design
As a research institute that collaborates with partners across Ontario and around the world to accelerate the development of new cancer research, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) has a vision to solve cancer together.
- Industry
Nonprofit
- DeliverablesCopywritingWebsite DesignWebsite StrategyWordPress Development
Challenge
We saw potential for a new website that would help fuel the connections at the heart of cancer research and enable barrier-free sharing of cancer research information, opportunities & impact.
Impact
- An easy-to-navigate resource catering to diverse stakeholders
- A compelling showcase of OICR’s scientific & economic impact
- A custom WordPress website that can grow as OICR’s requirements evolve
- Flexible, modular design to meet the needs of a large, disparate organization
- An intuitive website back-end that can easily be managed by one person
- A template for redeveloping additional OICR website properties
User-Driven Web Design
Our solution was to flatten the organization of programs. This eliminating hierarchies and sorting everything alphabetically. User testing confirmed that this approach worked well.
We also added a dynamic filter to allow the user to quickly narrow the results.
Removing Navigation Barriers & Simplifying the User Experience
How can a site allow every user to reach their destination within 3 clicks?
We initially proposed a dropdown wizard meant to provide easy-to-use dropdown fields to customize search criteria on the OICR site. However, sometimes in web design you end up overthinking things.
Balancing Customization with Consistency
We created custom component blocks to allow the OICR team to build pages without any need for additional programming.
These blocks can be moved around and placed anywhere on a page.
Smart, Modular Design
We used modular design to create user-friendly backend templates.
On pages where content is templated, we built page frameworks that allow OICR to easily choose the sections they want and fill them in.
Pre-Designed Sections
We created a page template composed entirely of pre-designed sections that can be completed by filling in the missing pictures and content.
Some sections are dynamically generated while others are manually created.
“In a complex organization like OICR, there is a great diversity of worthy priorities and perspectives. The Hyphen team listened to everyone, balancing different stakeholder needs and helping us unite behind a shared vision for the new website.”
Director, Communications