The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster.
I lead UX and visual design for the Digital Communications department. My role supports our digital content products like our websites, social media and video. I also partner with other departments in the organization for consulting on their digital design projects.
In 2016, we did a full redesign of Rescue.org, moving to a responsive, category-leading website in the humanitarian space. Our goals were to evolve our digital presence, grow our audience, position us as a thought leader in the field and magnify our influence.
The first phase of the project was to collaborate with our partnering agency Code & Theory on a strong creative direction that spoke to the IRC brand, conducting stakeholder interviews, developing personas and developing our site blueprint. We conducted 14 weeks of preliminary design sprints.
During the second phase, we spent four months sprinting to a site launch. We completed the build in-house without agency support. I worked very closely with our developers, rapidly turning over fleshed out responsive templates and what we call "embeddables", which are elements that allow you to fully customize the layout of your page. We simplified the information architecture, now visitors can easily and quickly find the information they want whether it be a specific humanitarian crisis, country or a higher level topic.
By modernizing the look and feel, while maintaining the brand’s identity and integrity, we built a refreshing user experience that captivates our audience, clearly defines IRC’s mission and encourages support of the work we do. The new platform offers rich and engaging content with the use of powerful imagery and editorial content.
The design allows IRC editors to easily provide up-to-date crisis reporting -- which include rich data visualization, live stats from the field, interactive maps, and inform our users about a crisis of which they may not have known about.
This project allowed our team to produce a sophisticated and modern translation of IRC’s brand. We've been able to create a coherent design system that ensures consistency in our various channels. These digital styles have influenced our work across the organization. I created a system of style guides for these groups to ensure consistency in our brand presentation.
Part of my role is to support social media, and we've developed a strong series of templates and pictograms for sharing with our supporters. I've discussed the styles and approach to social graphics that I've created for the IRC in an interview with Canva.
