The Westfield Labs website design embraced the company’s Bay Area start-up culture, showcasing its unique place within its mature parent company.
I led website UI design, working closely with development to ensure the intended implementation, and collaborated with another UI/UX designer at Westfield Labs to establish the vision and unique visual style. Additionally, I conducted research to define the company's personality representation.
Launched in 2015. Site was taken down in 2017 due to a company merger.Project overview
To highlight Westfield Labs’ unique position as a Bay Area digital startup within the mature Westfield Corporation, my goal for the project was to breathe a new edgy, playful gust of wind into into some of the Westfield branding elements to build an entirely distinct visual identity. One detail was choosing to feature a bright red transparent nav bar that would pop and snap to fade on as the user scrolls as a compelling way to reference the Westfield red.
Website homepage, initial state.
About page, various sections.
Contact page, top section.
Annotations and components for the transparent red navigation bar. For desktop the bar appeared on hover, and for mobile the red bar was persistent, with a solid transparent background for the expanded menu.
Wireframes for the site, which block out where all content components will live, as well as how they will be integrated with imagery and visual motifs.
Discovery phase
I conducted research on employees to find out what my colleagues felt was the “Labs voice”, and synthesized the results to find that employees were drawn to minimal and compelling imagery, retro illustration styles, and architectural blueprint drawings that remind them of the monumental physical shopping centres. Working hard to echo the visions of the current team guided the final product in a direction that would send the appropriate message to prospective job applicants and business partners.
I displayed two large boards in our office, inviting colleagues to vote on images that best represented the Westfield Labs' voice. With fellow design team members as observers, we listened to colleagues' thoughts, reactions, and their vision for Labs marketing materials.
I synthesized quotes that stood out to me from the group of 50-80 employees that participated in the exercise, and sorted them into where they fell in the spectrum between the two boards.
Of the images that received the most votes, I analyzed what visual details likely made them more attractive to the members of our team. By extracting specific parts of the images, I outlined three dominant visual themes that would be strong elements to incorporate into the new style guide.
Some early concept visual mocks I explored for the landing page.