The approach

We aimed to demonstrate the clinical expertise and support offered by Brainkind through a personable, empathetic, and professional experience, creating empathy with beneficiaries and professionals alike. All this whilst creating a fast, accessible and friendly user interface with a universally inclusive user experience.

To ensure consistency, our approach adhered to the brand strategy, developing a single overarching web proposition and purpose: ‘Giving audiences the confidence to live their life and trust in the care of Brainkind’.

Discovery and research:

The brand strategy research completed by Ragged-Edge, alongside our own stakeholder engagement and user research at the start of the website project, meant we understood both the organisational and target audience requirements. This enabled us to tailor our design based on real user needs and communicate in a way that would feel familiar and approachable to users.

User experience and planning:

We’ve found engagement improves with a structured navigation that meets a user’s understanding, clear calls to action, and an information hierarchy that doesn’t overload them. Our level of audience knowledge, from research and audience mapping, played a huge role in creating a clear information architecture and site structure that would provide education about brain injury, access to clinical research, services and distinct tools and pages for professionals.

We identified a need to create an area specifically for clinicians and commissioners. However, we wanted to ensure all other sections were relevant for both primary audiences. We established clear content structures and user flows based on intent to keep the site free from overwhelm, clutter and fragmentation over time. This content structure ensures quick access and an intuitive experience that guides users through actions like signing up, registering for events, and searching for services and information.

Accessibility baked-in

The website was set to be the first implementation of the new brand creative. We’re proud of the website’s creative execution for Brainkind, which adheres to brand principles and guidelines and creates a clean, contemporary, and person-centred design.

The design is highly accessible; focusing on supporting people with acquired brain injury, we needed to prioritise motor and cognitive needs in our designs. We used the Foundation framework, which has accessibility built-in, and we always aim for a minimum WCAG AA compliance as standard. We integrated the Recite Me Assistive Toolbar, which allows users to take full control of their accessibility needs with ease of access.

The new brand was highly accessible, with a distinctive colour pallet that allowed for a bright, vibrant, stand-out brand. With distinct assets and clear visual cues, the brand translated beautifully to digital. Through the use of lifestyle photography, the website creates emotional and personal connections while representing colleagues and celebrating Brainkind’s work.

Importantly, people living with brain injury need to find help, but they also need to be better represented. We ensured to bring to life and represent the voice of those affected. The website creates a sense of community and support for the brand and the people it represents.

Consistency and flexibility

We established a clear design system with defined page templates and a cohesive visual language. This ensures that the website remains consistent throughout its lifecycle and aligns with the brand beyond the website.

Our modular approach gives the in-house team the flexibility and structure to quickly and easily add and update content to reflect the charity’s facilities, centres and campaigns. By implementing designs in this way, we were able to ensure the website can adapt and flex alongside the brand while maintaining the core propositions and website purposes originally designed.

Specially designed service pages provide a clear overview of each specialism, with easy-to-read bullet points providing clarity, quick access to information, and a more diverse media experience, allowing visitors to engage as they want to and better understand the care experience. Case studies and blogs allow Brainkind to write about the people supported, the journeys they’ve been on, and the support received.

Through the design and use of stand-out and highlighted content modules, Brainkind is able to showcase, advocate for and amplify the brilliant work and outputs of particular projects, research and campaigns. This has been particularly important within policy and advocacy work to become a voice of influence and a trusted source of information on brain injury.

The homepage also allows for flexibility and adaptability with the option to change the way it looks to fit with primary campaigns or business areas of focus. The website is now better suited to support, for example, fundraising campaigns, recruitment or occupancies.

Recruitment is also a big area of focus for Brainkind. The website allows the creation of landing pages to drive recruitment support, demonstrate what it’s like to work at Brainkind, and create trust and expectations before navigating to a third-party recruitment platform.

Having this flexible approach enables Brainkind to create pages and campaigns that work for specific strategic objectives and achieve desired outcomes. The modules allow for text-focused content, visual representation through imagery, clean and clear space that allows design and text to breathe, and the ability to highlight numbers and impact.

Support and maintenance

To ensure the Brainkind website remains up-to-date, secure, and fully optimised, it is hosted, maintained, and supported by our dedicated support team. This includes direct access to UX and UI designers, UX researchers, WordPress developers and QA specialists. This is overseen and managed by a Senior Account Manager who maintains a strong and trusted relationship with the Brainkind team.