Chemistry Wilker lab website redesign

Client: Purdue Department of Chemistry
Role: Designer and Developer

In fall 2023, I met with Isabelle, a graduate student in Professor Jonathan Wilker's lab, to discuss redesigning their website. They needed a sleek, modern, accessible website while staying within the Purdue brand. Understanding that a custom website takes time to design and build, they bought a Wix site for a year. Soon after, they asked for a design that felt similar to their Wix site.

I reviewed the Wix site, looked at several Purdue-branded websites for inspiration, and researched CSS frameworks. I modeled the site design after the Purdue Birck Nanotechnology Center website and used Bootstrap version 5 for the framework.

This was a challenging project:

• Learning about Bootstrap 5.
• The Birck site uses WordPress and custom CSS, so I had to understand the differences between that and what the Wilker site redesign needed.
• Converting a Wix site into a Cascade site is difficult because they're two completely different content management systems that handle sites differently.
• Balancing the client's needs vs Purdue's branding requirements.

In late February, I finished the homepage design and sent it to Isabelle for review. The homepage has five sections: introduction, research, publications, full-width image, and contact us. Improvements were made to:

• Introduction: I combined the lab introduction text and a research image into one section.
• Publications: The Wix site used a rotating carousel. I implemented a horizontal card layout instead, which makes the content more scannable.
• Contact: I put the social media and related links into one section.

I finished building the site redesign in late April and emailed Isabelle. The redesign was approved with only minor changes. I wrote the Cascade documentation and trained Isabelle on May 17. The site redesign was launched on May 31, 2024. The Wilker Lab website redesign is now on brand and better meets the lab's needs.