Digital Catapult
A design system that supports digital innovation through acceleration programmes
Challenge
Digital Catapult is the UK’s leading technology innovation centre. They design and run programmes that accelerate the early adoption and application of cutting-edge technologies. Whenever a new programme is launched, a new satellite site may be created, which over time, has led to an ecosystem of inconsistent website experiences. This can be confusing for users, is difficult for Digital Catapult to manage and maintain, and risks diluting their brand.
Solution
Digital Catapult needed a better way to create, launch and manage their satellite websites. They needed a design system that makes it simple to create, maintain and update their satellite websites. Our vision was that these websites should also offer a best-in-class user-centric experience that reflected the brand’s digital innovation credentials, and that the solution allowed Digital Catapult’s to create consistent branded experiences.
Discovery revealed the websites had many common requirements; a user friendly CMS that makes it easy to manage content, a consistent use of brand, common user experience and interface (UX/UI) patterns and the need to make each programme distinctive.
We worked with Digital Catapult to identify common functional requirements, and researched users to better understand audience types and needs. This allowed us to create a robust design system consisting of clear guidelines, templates and a universal IA model.
We refined the approach as we applied it to three separate satellite websites; CreativeXR, MIGarage, Made Smarter and Augmentor. This approach allowed us to master a final system that had been applied in the real world.
The new design system, and modular approach to the WordPress build, makes it easy for Digital Catapult to replicate, launch and maintain websites that deliver an excellent user experience with dramatically reduced effort.
Results
The newly launched websites have delivered significant benefits in the three key areas:
Saving time.. Digital Catapult can replicate, launch and manage new websites in a fraction of the time and effort previously required. They know exactly what needs to be done, and how to do it.
Better engagement. Our user-centric design system has improved key user engagement metrics. Users spend up to twice (214% increase) the time engaging with content and view up to 58% more pages. The websites also enjoy significantly lower overall bounce rates.
Better technology. The lightweight WordPress framework has resulted in improved page load times by up to 84%.
“The design system Pixeled Eggs has put in place for our many websites has made a big difference to Digital Catapult. Not only has it made it much easier and quicker for us to launch new satellite programmes online, it has dramatically improved the user experience of our websites.”
Alessia Musciano – Senior Marketing Manager
