The Newton Fund & GCRF original

Combining two major ODA funding schemes on one website - while maintaining their distinct brand identities.

Adapting to the impacts of COVID-19 by running a fully remote Discovery phase with an international group of stakeholders.

A collaborative Discovery Phase was essential to defining the funds’ user and business requirements, as well as identifying the best possible approach to merging the two websites.

One of our key challenges was the management of a large group of stakeholders at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We interviewed 20+ stakeholders from around the world, including multiple partner country representatives and project managers, in order to understand their individual objectives and key messages.

We also led a series of UX workshops which focused on information architecture and brand messaging.

We worked flexibly to accommodate logistical differences such as different time zones, using a combination of written statements and user surveys to support language barriers.

A mixture of quantitative and qualitative UX research informed us as we delivered an optimised information architecture as well as a strong overall strategy for the website.

Showcasing the funds’ combined scale and outreach with an accessible and interactive map.

The Newton Fund and GCRF’s stakeholders were keen to find a way to demonstrate their global impact in an engaging and visual way without compromising on accessibility.

Based on a series of workshops, benchmarking sessions and remote user testing, we proposed a bespoke and fully interactive map, linking to country-specific content sections.

In order to meet accessibility standards, we added a toggle for users to view the content in a table.

You can see the final results through the link below

Devising a strong, user-focused information architecture to house each fund.

The key to this project was to allow the two funds’ brands to sit under the same roof while retaining their key individual elements.

Based on detailed SEO and analytics analysis, we were able to identify the funds’ key content areas and make recommendations as to which content should be kept. These recommendations were made from both the user’s perspective and a search optimisation perspective.

We were then able to create a content plan, mapping out the content that could be migrated to the new website and identifying the content that would need to be recreated from scratch.