2011 was a banner year for Lenovo. This international tech company was crowned the #3 global PC maker, rolled out a snazzy new brand campaign (have you seen its For Those Who Do ads?), and partnered with Viget to launch the new Lenovo Blogs and Social pages.
The new Lenovo Social homepage
Our goal for this redesign was to centralize Lenovo's existing blogs and social media in an engaging, navigable, and branded way, using one easily maintainable CMS. This would solve a few of the old sites' big problems:
Continue reading "Lenovo Blogs and Social: A New Connection for Those Who “Do”"
We love working with entrepreneurs to make innovative ideas a reality. Earlier this summer we met the folks at RoundPegg, a Boulder-based TechStars alum, and were immediately excited by their vision: to optimize the hiring process and human interactions within the workplace through a combination of science and technology.
Although there's already a number of technology companies (Gild, BranchOut, Top Prospect, Jobvite, Jibe, LinkedIn) focused on addressing human resources challenges, RoundPegg provides a unique and powerful tool set that we were happy to help expand and enhance. (Check out these quick video introductions to two of RoundPegg's tools: pre-hire assessments and company culture surveys.)
Last week RoundPegg launched the update to its product that we helped design and develop. Here's a closer look at the process.
Continue reading "Product Design and Development: Reshaping RoundPegg"
If you're going to build an iPad app, you shouldn't simply
replicate your website or do so with the plain intention of increasing
exposure to your content. With responsive design trends in full swing
and the growing ubiquity of wi-fi networks, the likelihood an iPad user
(or any tablet-toter for that matter) can already access your web
content in a meaningful way is almost assured. Going native should be
a decision based around leveraging the unique benefits of the device,
particularly the physical and gestural aspects. Viget and Opower
recently had occasion to venture down this path together, and arrived at
an app squarely suited for the iPad.
Continue reading "Opower’s iPad App: Focus on What the Device Does Best"
I've been bursting at the seams trying to keep this one a secret, but the time has finally come to announce the new upenn.edu!
This site serves as the primary web portal for the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution in Philadelphia. Founded by Benjamin Franklin more than 250 years ago, Penn has rich historical roots and a modern, forward-thinking philosophy that has helped it grow into one of the world's premier centers for education, scholarship, and research. It's also the best school in the world (although, as an alum, I am clearly biased).
Penn's previous site had been around since my freshman year (a long time ago, especially by web standards) and no longer accurately reflected the University's evolving personality and standing in the global community. UPenn.edu needed a modern design that showcased the University's friendly culture, top academics, and commitment to service ... And, that's where Viget came in.
Continue reading "The Red and Blue, Reimagined: the New UPenn.edu"
It's always great to see an existing client take big steps toward growing its business -- but, it's even more exciting when we get to help!
Viget continued our ongoing partnership with MetaMetrics, a Durham-based company whose mission is to improve education through linking assessment with instruction, to expand its Engaging English® reading service. Engaging English uses the Lexile® framework to measure the reading skill levels of English-language learners, connect them to reading resources that match their level, and then track their progress.
We teamed up on the Engaging English product not too long ago, providing UX, visual design, and front-end development services. However, at the time, the "marketing" arm of the site was simply a one-page login screen with a brief product tour. Memberships were only available through a partnership with Educational Testing Service (ETS), so on-site marketing outreach and e-commerce weren't needed.
But, the time has finally come for Engaging English to expand and offer its own e-commerce! Now that users can join directly through the site, the Engaging English landing page needed to transform into a full-fledged marketing experience.
Continue reading "Engaging English Goes E-commerce"
Video game heroes win extra life all the time, but what about video gaming web sites? We recently worked with Epic Games, a pioneer in cutting-edge gaming technology, to give a "1-up" to the marketing site for the "Unreal Technology" cross-platform game engine. The original site was 10 years old and didn't accurately showcase Unreal Engine's industry-leading technology -- a technology that was featured on stage by Steve Jobs during the iPhone 4 launch.
To tell Unreal Engine's compelling story, we started with an initial engagement to create mood boards and set the visual design direction. We had fun with three game-inspired boards, including this one, which was ultimately chosen to inform the site's design.
Next, we took the site through our full redesign process -- starting with user experience research and strategy, moving through visual design compositions based on the selected mood board, and culminating in front-end build-out of the page designs. Through our UX and marketing work, we revised the site's architecture and page layouts to better emphasize Unreal's capabilities and success stories, while also encouraging users to get in touch with the Epic sales team. We then brought these layouts to life with sleek, functional visual designs that mirror the experience of a high-tech video game and emphasize Unreal's vivid imagery.
Continue reading "An Unreal Redesign: Epic Games Advances to the Next Level"
When we sat down with the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network in early January, we walked away from the table both excited about their mission and energized with ideas for their new site. Today, we are proud to announce the launch of the redesigned www.think2040.org.
A project of the Roosevelt Campus Network, Think 2040 "empowers millennials to take an active, visionary role in re-imagining and building America's future." Viget partnered with Think 2040 to complete a five-week engagement, which included user experience design, visual design, front-end development, and custom Ruby on Rails development.
The Before
The original Think 2040 page was pretty basic, and didn't include a lot of interactivity, as you can see.
Continue reading "Redesigning Think2040.org"
Viget doesn't just do web sites -- we also design all sorts of other cool products and applications, from mobile to Facebook.
As an example, we worked with ReverbNation, a start-up that's become one of the biggest musician sites on the web, to redesign the user interface for its MyBand Facebook application. With 2.5 million active users, including musicians from Sean Kingston and Tenacious D to the garage band down the street, MyBand aims to keep fans engaged with an artist's latest songs, photos, videos, and tour dates. It also provides a path to purchase merchandise or sign up for a mailing list.
The MyBand application displays a great amount of diverse information -- so we needed to create a visual hierarchy that reduces clutter while making all this information easy to digest.
Continue reading "Designing for Facebook: the MyBand Application Redesign"
Here at Viget, we love working with young start-ups to help them establish their identities and express a personality that really stands out.
Recently we worked with our friends at MoreBetterLabs to design a new marketing homepage for Ruzuku.com. Ruzuku is an online social learning community, and it needed a more compelling homepage design to coincide with the launch of user registration.
As you can see, the original page was pretty basic ...
Continue reading "Giving a new face to Ruzuku.com"
Lafayette College launched its redesigned web site on Sunday at www.lafayette.edu. Viget worked with the Easton, PA-based liberal arts college for the past six months to redesign the main Lafayette.edu web site.
We went into the project with several key business goals in mind. We knew that we needed to provide the College with a fresh professional design that would resonate with their core audiences. At the same time, it was important to provide an improved user experience targeted to the needs and interests of the site's users. To accomplish this, we set out to build a site that would:
- build the Lafayette brand to enhance its reputation as a dynamic, intellectually challenging, undergraduate liberal arts institution
- support users by making relevant, engaging content easy to find online.
Our process began with a full content audit and content inventory, a site map, and wireframes to really dig into the information architecture and user experience requirements of the redesign. On the visual side, we approached the rebrand with three distinct mood boards and several rounds of design comps before arriving at the finished product. (Get a behind the scenes look at the design process on our Inspire blog.)
Continue reading "Lafayette College Redesign"
