The Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (Stanford PACS) develops and shares knowledge to improve philanthropy, strengthen civil society, and effect social change. Stanford PACS connects students, scholars, and practitioners, and publishes the preeminent journal Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR).
Fair North Digital has been engaged with Stanford PACS since submitting a winning bid to an RFP in 2015 to build a new website called digitalimpact.io for the Digital Civil Society Lab within PACS. We have since expanded on our relationship to include the redesign and build the parent website for PACS itself, and to include work with other research labs within PACS.
The Digital Impact Toolkit was the brainchild of the Digital Civil Society Lab within Stanford PACS. It serves as a resource for nonprofits and charitable foundations, advising them on the effective, ethical, and safe use of digital data.
We worked closely with the DCSL to come up with a content strategy to effectively organize the wealth of content in use on the site. We created an original website design that is inviting, modern, and easy to navigate, while also ensuring that we adhered to Stanford University’s standards and requirements. Subtle animations and effects are used to enhance the user’s browsing experience without hindering usability or professionalism.
The Stanford PACS Website was in need of a redesign to better organize the information about the center, and to better serve the individual research labs within PACS.
We began by looking at the nature of the information and established the main priorities for the design and content architecture. One requirement which emerged as being a priority was the need to cross-link related content, and to do so in a way which would be easy for staff to manage as they posted content to the site, as this is a frequent occurrence. Another requirement was the need to maintain consistency across all of the constituent research labs, and to provide each of them with the flexibility to customize their section of the site in whichever way best suited their needs.
What we developed was a new design which neatly frames the large amount of content that the site contains. The content is readable and the cross-references between related content is clear and easy to understand. Lists of content are filterable and customizable according to the user’s needs, and searching makes content easy to find. Site administrators were given simple tools keep their content up-to-date and linked up in the optimal way.
See WebsiteIf you are interested in content strategy, original website design, or website hosting and maintenance, please reach out using the form below. We’d be happy to begin a conversation about where we may be able to help.