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RAND Website Strategy

A deep-dive research and discovery project

A think tank’s research-backed approach to content strategy

It’s no surprise that a renowned, 75-year-old think tank would pursue a robust learning phase ahead of a brand refresh and website redesign. Just as RAND’s experts are committed to quality and objectivity, these core values governed the digital modernization process.

 

 

The immersive learning phase…

  • Heuristic website audit
  • Performance data analysis
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) assessment
  • Accessibility audit
  • Market research
  • Focus groups with more than 50 internal stakeholders
  • Interviews with more than 20 audience members
  • Online audience survey

…Set the solid foundation for the future

Challenge 1: Understanding audiences

RAND launched in 1948 to connect military planning with research and development. Since then, it has expanded into other topics—such as children and families, energy and environment, health, social equity, and transportation—for audiences outside of national security.

Teal brought each audience segment to life by developing user personas. Each persona included demographic information, goals, motivations, media habits, and more. The personas helped RAND become more strategic about generating and promoting its innovative research.

Challenge 2: User journeys

Interview participants shared that they were so overwhelmed by the site’s architecture, they didn’t know where to start exploring. Pain points included:

  • Confusion between research vs. commentary
  • Lack of awareness that organizations can hire RAND for research
  • More than 1,000 topics to browse

The new site needed clear pathways for audience segments. The improvements included intuitive content groupings, clear labels, redesigned menus, and more options for filtering and searching.

Challenge 3: Getting to the BLUF

Audiences reported that even a single page of research could be overwhelming, due to dense text and highly technical writing.

In the discovery phase, RAND realized it wanted to engage the public, too.

The new content strategy borrows a time-tested military communications structure: the bottom line up front. Adopting the BLUF means that pages begin with key takeaways that both laypeople and busy experts can appreciate.

Iterative Design Process

Teal and RAND applied the learnings in agile sprints to accelerate the design phase. Wireframes, visual concepts, and page designs were developed in live working sessions that allowed for real-time feedback.

These strategic sessions married the design with the site goal and user journeys, ensuring a successful user experience.

Brand Refresh and Expansion

After seeing the website designs, the RAND team decided to expand the new visual identity across all of their channels. Teal guided the RAND design team to create a flexible, comprehensive design system.

Read the Case Study

Next Project

RAND Brand Refresh and Expansion

RAND Brand Refresh and Expansion

As the RAND team progressed in a website redesign with Teal, they realized they wanted to expand the visual identity into all of their channels.