Research Triangle Park
When one of NC’s top business organizations wanted a new online presence, Atlantic BT delivered a socially-enabled digital experience.
Telling the Digital Story of a Research Community
Home to more than 200 technology companies employing more than 50,000 experts in micro-electronics, telecommunications, biotechnology, big data, and environmental sciences, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park’s work impacts the globe. Led by a board of directors drawn from top companies and universities, the RTP has been an epicenter of research for more than 50 years.
But to keep this story moving forward, the RTP needed a digital presence reflecting the ingenuity, collaboration, and vision that defined the organization. This meant updating the text-driven legacy site into a dynamic, mobile-optimized online experience. Atlantic BT brought this digital vision to life.
The Story
How to Reimagine a Digital Presence
The Challenge
As one of the world’s top business organizations, the Research Triangle Park needed a new vision for its homepage. The existing RTP.org lacked social media engagement, was not optimized for mobile, and did not reflect the community of the RTP.
The Strategy
Atlantic BT transformed the RTP legacy site into a socially-engaged experience. The new RTP.org relies on images and interactivity to facilitate user exploration and sharing of RTP content.
The Result
The new RTP.org integrated the culture and vision of the Research Triangle Park into the new site. This reimagined digital presence drew in nearly 178,000 new users and reached more than 22,000 followers on Twitter.
The redesign of RTP.org needed more than a new coat of paint—it needed a holistic digital experience that engaged visitors in the online conversation and community of the Research Triangle Park.
Strategy & UX
Community Empowerment in a User-Driven Homepage
After extensive analysis, research, and interviews with RTP leaders, we designed an intuitive site that facilitated navigation with menu drawers and interactive maps.
Image-Driven Design
Dynamic Imagery for Deep Engagement
Rich innovation demands more than a text-heavy website. Using tiled images of research and collaboration, we presented a visual story to show how RTP leads a community of collaboration.
Mobile First Approach
How to Capture an Audience on the Move
By 2017, more than 63% of mobile phone users will access online content through their devices. To engage the university students and young professionals who would become the future of the RTP, we created a mobile- and socially-optimized design for RTP.org.
Dynamic Multi-Tier Menu
Asking the Right Information Architecture Questions
Understanding the RTP’s visitors meant trusting their experts. We used a series of workshops and interviews for a deep discovery of the RTP history and brand. This showed us how the RTP’s vision should inform the way users navigated RTP.org.
A Menu Approach to Navigation Design
To streamline site navigation at RTP.org, we designed a web interface that relied on a dynamic menu. This always-on menu used mouseover capabilities to make it simple for visitors to quickly find the information they needed.
Social Content API
The Digital Foundation for Social Enablement
We built a social content API to allow visitors to RTP.org to share images, videos, and articles—empowering them to contribute to the RTP story on social channels.
Digital Style Guide
Tools to Facilitate the Future
To equip the RTP leadership for future updates, we created content management tools that made it easy to post and share new content assets.
Get the Full Story
Learn How This Dynamic Redesign Grew the RTP Community
