Way back in 2004, we redesigned the site of lead­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al USA. Amnesty per­forms research and takes actions to end or pre­vent abus­es to human rights around the globe­from vio­lence against women in the Mid­dle East and North Africa, to the exe­cu­tion of minors and men­tal­ly ill pris­on­ers in the U.S.

Problem: Too much content

Amnesty is the defin­i­tive resource for peo­ple who want to make a dif­fer­ence. But, like many large con­tent sites, Amnestys had grown organ­i­cal­ly and some­what hap­haz­ard­ly over the years, its archi­tec­ture dic­tat­ed by cir­cum­stance and inter­nal pri­or­i­ties rather than analy­sis of user needs.

Although the site offered unsur­passed infor­ma­tion and sup­port, not every­one who vis­it­ed could find what they were look­ing for, reduc­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion and dimin­ish­ing new memberships.

Solution: Commitment-based navigation

We dis­trib­uted Amnestys con­tent along a three-part arc based on the vis­i­tors lev­el of com­mit­ment­from the mere­ly curi­ous (LEARN) to the pas­sion­ate­ly engaged (ACT). The cat­e­gories and their rela­tion­ships to one oth­er are trans­par­ent­ly intu­itive, mak­ing it easy for first-time and expe­ri­enced vis­i­tors alike to know where to look. We also worked with Amnesty to estab­lish rules for aggre­gat­ing con­tent and for prun­ing unre­lat­ed con­tent and need­less imagery whose inco­her­ence con­fused vis­i­tors instead of help­ing them.

Problem: Lackluster branding

Amnesty is inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nizedas well known to its oppo­nents as to its many sup­port­ers. The sites visu­al design did not reflect its strength as a brand. Illus­tra­tion and oth­er tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of brand enhance­ment were out of reach financially.

A coher­ent brand iden­ti­ty was fur­ther under­cut by ran­dom visu­al vari­a­tions between sec­tions: one sec­tion might use three columns while anoth­er used four, and so on. More­over, the sites reliance on pho­tog­ra­phy sub­mit­ted by dis­parate jour­nal­ists unfor­tu­nate­ly con­tributed to the lack of cohe­sion, impair­ing usabil­i­ty and fur­ther dimin­ish­ing the brand, even though it brought home the urgent real­i­ties Amnesty tackles.

Solution: Brand enrichment

We gave the Amnesty brand its due by fear­less­ly pro­mot­ing a lim­it­ed palette of strong brand col­ors and by enforc­ing visu­al con­sis­ten­cy across the sites vary­ing sec­tions via crisp tem­plates and rules-based design. We also devised a method to bring visu­al con­sis­ten­cy to dis­parate pho­tographs, no mat­ter where, by whom, or under what light­ing con­di­tions they were taken.

Problem: Bloat

Like most sites that have been around a while, Amnestys relied on out­mod­ed, non­se­man­tic, band­width-inten­sive front-end markup that made the site inac­ces­si­ble to some vis­i­tors and brows­ing devices, and also forced the site to take longer to load than it need­ed to.

Solution: Web standards

We gave Amnesty seman­tic, light­weight markup and clean CSS lay­out, there­by increas­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty while reduc­ing band­width over­head and load times. Hey, its just what we do.

Our responsibilities on this project

All in all, the project includ­ed usabil­i­ty analy­sis and infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture; UX design; lim­it­ed con­tent strat­e­gy assis­tance; graph­ic design; site design; tem­plate devel­op­ment; style guide devel­op­ment; CMS devel­op­ment; tem­plate load­ing; and test­ing. It was launched in Sep­tem­ber, 2004. Need­less to say, the orga­ni­za­tion has redesigned sev­er­al times since then.

Vis­it the archived site.