About the Project

Over 15 years of operation, the Youth Palace had significantly expanded its activities: new programs, departments, and events had emerged. However, within the outdated site structure, all of this content ended up disorganized and difficult for users to access. In addition, the visual style no longer met the expectations of the target audience — today's youth.

My task was to: conduct a complete visual redesign, migrate the site to a new platform, and build a logical structure and user journey for each segment of the target audience.

The client approached me with a request to redesign and rebuild the institution's corporate website. The portal had existed since 2007 and had never undergone any visual updates.

Challenges & Problems

The institution's projects had been developed reactively, driven by specific tasks, and each year covered new audiences. As a result, a wide range of target audience segments had accumulated with no clear classification or grouping logic. It was necessary to develop a segmentation principle and build the navigation around it.

The site had to meet the requirements of every department within the institution. This required organizing regular meetings with staff and iterative testing of each solution against the specific needs of each department.

The project had to be completed before a reporting meeting with the regional governor — the updated site needed to be presented by the end of the year as part of the strategy for the upcoming season.

My Approach

Before anything else, I held a detailed meeting with the client to understand their vision, goals, and specific design preferences.

Content

A large volume of video and photo content was incorporated into carousels and slideshows. More photos, less graphics.

The face of the institution is its projects and event participants. Events are full of emotion — and that's exactly what we decided to leverage.

Design & Development

Pages listing projects, support measures, and events were equipped with a flexible filtering system. This allowed users to find the information they needed based on a specific query, without having to browse through the entire content library.

Brand elements from the institution's major projects were adapted for thematic sections, while maintaining a unified corporate color palette — ensuring visual consistency across the site while preserving the individuality of each direction.

Testing & Launch

The project was completed on schedule. The site release was timed to coincide with a major institutional event, which provided a natural announcement of the update to the target audience.

Issues identified during testing were promptly incorporated into the design within the same two-week cycle — allowing fixes to be re-tested with the same group and reducing the overall time spent on revisions.

A focus group of 10 people was assembled for each department. Over two weeks, participants completed tasks based on website usage scenarios, after which structured feedback was collected.

Result

The audience responded positively to the updated site. For many years, the Youth Palace had been actively growing, while its digital presence remained at the 2007 level. The redesign bridged that gap — the site now reflects the true scale of the institution's activities and meets the expectations of a modern youth audience.

The client rated the outcome of the work highly. The project was characterized by a high level of client involvement: regular meetings, openness to unconventional solutions, and constructive communication at every stage. The institution issued me a permanent building pass, which allowed me to receive feedback quickly and work directly on-site — I spent several days working full-time embedded within the departments.