Impact Management Project (IMP)
Creating a new platform for measuring and managing sustainability impact
Project overview
Founded in 2016, The Impact Management Project (IMP) was a time-bound forum for building global consensus on how to measure, assess and report the impact of business on people and the natural environment. One of IMP’s initiatives was the creation of a website that would provide much-needed guidance on the world of impact management.
That’s where we came in! Working closely with the IMP team, we co-created the brand new, first-of-its kind, Impact Management Platform, allowing businesses to compare sustainability standards from the world’s biggest standard-setting organisations.
Features
- Powerful new search system and custom ‘favourite’ functionality
- In-depth glossary and corresponding tooltip system
- Brand development and guidelines
- Personalised ‘explainer’ video
- Lightweight Lottie animations
- Dynamic menu – interactive wheel and intuitive contents sidebar
0.19g
CO2 per homepage view
96%
Performance
1.3s
Page load time
A Discovery first approach
Knowing that we were creating a platform of resources that had never existed before, this project took a ‘discovery first’ approach, starting with an in-depth initial round of user research, speaking to those who would be making use of the platform once available.
Taking the results from this research, we then facilitated a series of UX workshops to fully define the target audience of the new site, creating fully formed user personas. These personas then helped us to map out each user journey and develop thoughtful information architecture that would meet all users’ needs.
Powerful new search system and custom functionalities
To ensure that those using the new platform to find impact management resources, we implemented a powerful search system.
The content editing team at IMP can ensure that the system learns over time by weighting and prioritising search terms and adding synonyms over time.
Being able to track its usage also allows the team to focus on the resources most in demand and weight the search terms accordingly.
One of the themes that we kept returning to during the discovery phase, was how hard it can be to find the right standard for a particular job. This evolving search function also supports instant search results as you type, using multiple filters and ordering results by relevance. This helps to point people in the right direction towards the best resources for their needs.
In addition to this powerful search function, we also added a special ‘favourite’ functionality, that allows people to favourite certain resources to return to later, without the need to create an account.
In depth glossary and tooltip system
There is a lot of jargon to navigate in the impact management space. To help bring about consensus, and educate new and future sustainability managers, we created an in-depth glossary and corresponding tooltip system.
This new system makes it easy for the website editors to highlight certain words in their content and link to a corresponding glossary term. This allows the user to simply hover over a word to see a quick definition, rather than having to search for its meaning.
Not knowing what a word means shouldn’t be a barrier to impact management.
Visual branding
In developing the branding for this new platform, it was essential to us that the content should be intuitive to navigate, and accessible to all. With the key background colours of grey and white, and a splash of red to emphasise the importance of measuring and managing impact, we developed brand elements that fed into the guidelines we created to inform their usage throughout the site.
Personalised explainer video
To raise awareness of the key terms and concepts in impact management, we storyboarded and animated an explainer video.
This marked another collaboration with one of our favourite animators, David Doelman, and our own Production Manager, Nick (who also managed this project) returned to his theatrical roots to lend his voice to the video.
Lightweight Lottie animations
David also supported the branding element of this project by creating lightweight Lottie animations that bring the new brand elements to life.
Dynamic interactive menu
There is an overwhelming amount of impact management resources available on the platform, and this can make it hard for people to know where to begin.
To take some of the work out of finding a place to start, we designed an interactive menu wheel that visualises the actions of impact management.
Once inside each of the actions, business, you can navigate between actions and page content using an intuitive, dynamic contents sidebar that helps to direct your next step on your impact management journey.
Nick Hart, who managed this project for Wholegrain Digital, said:
“This has been a real joy to work on. Though the content might seem dense, the world of impact management is hugely important if we’re to move towards sustainability and we feel honored to be part of creating something that will make it easier for people to achieve.”
