For NWO-I, Ontwerpwerk designed and built a public website that gives ten national research institutes a shared platform to tell their story, without losing what makes each institute’s research distinct.
The project started with user research into how visitors look for information about NWO-I and its institutes, which shaped a clear information architecture and navigation structure. The site brings together research narratives, an overview of major scientific research facilities, collaborations between institutes and external partners, and portraits of the people behind the work. It is organized so visitors can explore at whichever level of detail suits them, from a single researcher’s story to the full scope of NWO-I’s scientific footprint.
Visually, the site opens up room for storytelling and imagery, giving research narratives and portraits the space they need to communicate the human and scientific impact behind the institutes’ work, while staying within NWO’s existing house style.
The platform is built on Drupal, on a flexible content architecture with an extensive library of templates and building blocks. This lets NWO-I’s own editorial team assemble new pages and manage content independently as new research and stories are published.
The result is a public website that gives NWO-I’s science the visibility it deserves, and a platform built to grow alongside the research it represents.
