The Client: A well-known children's publishing company.

The Project: Develop a strategy and vision for a new version of the parent-facing site that would communicate the relevance for parents of the company's content, tools, and products. Move the site away from a typical "lifestyle" site for parents, with recipes and baby name guides, to a site that better reflected the company's established expertise in reading and learning. Find a "killer app" or tool that would promote repeat visits and increased page views. We were also asked to reuse components of the recently redesigned teacher-facing site where appropriate and leverage as many of its Drupal content types and templates as possible.

The Approach: With a limited budget, I reviewed existing market and demographic research, site analytics, and competitors' Websites to develop an understanding of the audience and their needs. I developed ad-hoc personas to guide our design strategy (which we captured in a document that was shared with the business team and executive sponsors) and inform the selection of new tools and features. In partnership with the creative director and visual designer, I created high-level conceptual wireframes that included an age-based "quick search" tool geared toward revealing relevant content at a single click, making the site feel both content-rich and personalized. With additional personalization planned for future phases, I designed a framework for notifications and other tools for registered users. The redesigned site recently launched.