Clean Design for an Important Community Resource

Just as the initial moments of discovery at a hospital can feel overwhelming, so too can the first few seconds on a new website, which means the new Brookings Health System site needed to be designed and organized with the same level of attention to wayfinding as the physical location.

Blend helped Brookings Health System by diving into a day-long discovery and strategy session, where site archetypes were developed, functionality was weighed, and the first sketches of a home page were saved on a Smart board.

From here, Blend reached out to the people who would be most likely to use the site: patients. Interviewing real patients provided the kind of insight we couldn’t find on our own. It also lead our design process down a clear and actionable path: help people calmly find their way through the site, just as we would help them find their way on the hospital campus. And while we often think of hospitals as large buildings or campuses filled with technology, the art of health care is tied up in people. The bulk of an effective podiatry practice isn’t in the facility itself, but in the providers who serve patients, and the success of a medical facility often lies with the experience and know-how of a small group of providers.

We wanted to make that connection clear on the new site — that each facility and available medical service is backed by real people with real names and real expertise. We wanted to make it easy to connect doctors and providers to both their services and their locations. And we did that by creating single points of connection for all content pieces through a deeply connected content model.