AIM lab

A website redesign for an accesibility-centered research center

About the project

client Access in the Making (AIM) lab
year 2023
role UI/UX, Wordpress dev
collaborators Roï Saade (UI frontpage, branding ) AIM lab (accessibility expertise)
the challenge Create an accessible visually engaging platform for AIM lab to promote their values, work and initiatives, while avoiding generic visuals
the solution The final design was visually engaging, highly functional, and accessible. The focus on aesthetics and accessible visuals resulted in a website that was both visually appealing and easy to use, with clear, concise information presented in an engaging and interactive manner.

The design process for the AIM lab website began with a thorough analysis of their needs and goals.

We conducted extensive research into web accessibility best practices as AIM lab has a diverse audience (people with disabilities, researchers and artists) as a multidisciplinary research center focusing on accessibility research.

The chosen design incorporated appealing and accessible visuals based on wayfinding, with a focus on clear information presentation and navigation.

  • Logical page structure and intuitive navigation system
  • Clear visual cues indicating what actions can be undertaken
  • Contrasting colour and typography for better legibility
  • Fully responsive to be accessed from different devices
  • Entirely designed for keyboard navigation
Screenshot of the mobile version of the AIM frontpage against a blurry cloud photo. The logo of AIM is on the bottom left and the mobile screenshot is on the right nearly taking the whole width of the photo
Good contrast and legibility were key elements of this project

We were expecting the website to be very content-heavy

As a community of academic experts, the AIM lab website presents research articles, research-creation projects and other academic events to the world. Moreover, we wanted to challenge the hierarchy between able-bodied and disabled users in mainstream web design practices by making the traditionnally hidden alt-text visible to all, a novel web design practice which had been successsfully explored in Air, River, Soil.

Thus we put emphasis on creating a clean minimalistic atmosphere with good visual hierarchy and information architecture to strike a balance with the heavy content. The goal was to reduce the cognitive load of the viewer and allow them to skim through the website quickly to find the information they are looking for.

Project card showing titles and thumbnails with their respective text descritions underneath
A set of 8 screenshots of the AIM website on a pale mauve background, placed in groups of 4 in 2 rows. The website's background is pale grey with blakc text. The text on the screenshots are too small to be read clearly. There are 4 distinct screenshots which are repeated twice with no particularly pattern in the display. They are screenshots of the project page (contains a tag cloud with the titles and thumbnails of 3 projects under it), about page (a tab with 3 sections - manifesto, what aim is/is not, our history) and protocol page (which shows a list of 5 protocol titles )
The clean minimalistic atmosphere with good visual hierarchy and information architecture to strike a balance with the heavy content
AIM lab desktop walkthrough