Context
A ground-up rebrand for a civil engineering giant
In 2023, SNC-Lavalin contracted Interbrand for a ground-up rebrand. The result was AtkinsRéalis, a unified identity for the Canadian-headquartered global engineering and project management firm formed through the integration of SNC-Lavalin, Atkins and Faithful+Gould. With around 37,000 employees working across many sectors in over 160 countries, AtkinsRéalis is a broad business, and the rebrand aimed to bring its many parts under a single, coherent identity.
For context on the 2023 rebrand, see Creative Pool’s coverage.
While the wider Interbrand team developed the new brand, Jonny Buck (UX Researcher), Lisa Pink (Project Manager) and I were tasked with exploring how AtkinsRéalis’s new corporate strategy could be expressed through their corporate site. The deliverable was a research-led report with mockups, illustrating tested directions, rather than a final site.
High-fidelity mock-up of what the homepage could look like with the team's UX recommendations incorporated
Problem
Translating strategic ambitions into a workable digital structure
The brand objectives and the information architecture (IA) challenge were entwined. AtkinsRéalis wanted to position itself as a globally inclusive employer and partner, attracting talent and clients across markets and disciplines. Those ambitions needed to be reflected on the site.
- Communicating inclusivity and accessibility credibly. AtkinsRéalis wanted to highlight that it was a place where people of all backgrounds are welcome.
- Showcasing a global business. AtkinsRéalis’s other strategic objective was to emphasise the international nature of their business whilst giving visitors from any market a clear path to the work relevant to them.
- Information architecture for a sprawling offering. They provide a wide range of engineering services across many sectors like power, transportation and defence, among many others. Their offering had been fragmented across a number of now redundant sub-brands. The IA had to make sense of this breadth so users could find relevant content without diminishing the company’s offering.
Approach
Designing in parallel with the rebrand
The UX workstream ran in parallel with strategy, brand identity and CX; each workstream interlocked with the others. Much of our work was downstream from strategy and identity, so working in an effective manner was challenging.
- Design sprints and testing. We structured the UX work as a series of design sprints, generally focused on how a strategic objective could be expressed through design.
- Working with the brand workstream as their identity took shape. The brand identity was being designed in parallel by Adam Johnson’s team. We tested how well their ideas worked in digital contexts, and provided broader accessibility guidance, helping them understand the constraints digital use would place on the identity they were developing.
- Establishing product design inside Interbrand. The digital solutions team had recently merged into Interbrand, and this was the first project in which it operated as part of the wider agency. Part of the work was demonstrating to new colleagues what product design contributed to brand strategy.
Design
Show, don’t tell
Brand values are most credibly communicated on a corporate site through what the site does, not what it says. A company can state that it values its people, or it can embed them prominently in its case studies. The first costs nothing to write; the second costs the company something to do. AtkinsRéalis wanted to be seen as internationally minded, inclusive, and technically expert, and each design sprint focused on how the site’s structure could carry one of these values.
Project overview
Map or grid, map and grid
An obvious place to showcase the international nature of AtkinsRéalis’s work was on their projects overview page, where users would browse the actual work AtkinsRéalis was doing.
- One approach was a world map view with notable projects placed on it based on location.
- A more conventional grid view was presented as an alternative with less emphasis on location.
“The grid view was the one that showcased the variety of work best, as I could see before filtering […] several different projects running.”
Test participant
We found users struggled to use the map. It presented a less conventional interaction model and added friction to the experience. The grid view won decisively for usability. A hybrid view was then tested: its hero featured a world map with case studies animating in and out, with the preferred grid view sitting above the fold beneath it. This design tested well, with users finding it easy to use whilst emphasising the international nature of AtkinsRéalis’s business.
A variant of the projects overview page tested with users, leading with a world map to highlight the international nature of the business.
Navigation
The full picture
Four navigation variants were tested, ranging from a simple dropdown to mega navs of varying complexity. The variant that performed best in testing was a conventional mega nav with the full taxonomy of content exposed, which cut against the more minimal directions we had also tested.
AtkinsRéalis users were engineers, project managers and procurement leads who came to the site looking for specific capabilities, and they wanted depth and clarity rather than progressive disclosure.
“It had the most descripted details with no other distractions making it in my opinion the most capable one of helping you find your destination more easily.”
Testing participant
Final navigation mockup showing the full taxonomy of markets, created based on feedback from user testing.
Homepage
Spotlight the work
Two homepage variants took different approaches to what sat above the fold.
- One led with search and a purpose statement.
- The other led with content tiles surfacing case studies, articles and projects directly.
Testing participants liked the search-led variant, but overall preferred the content-led variant as it gave the impression of an established firm with a breadth of prestigious projects. The final design reflected this preference, but incorporated the purpose statement.
A poll embedded in the homepage was tested separately and was unanimously well-received. Participants responded to the implicit signal that the company wanted their input.
“Having the poll makes it feel like my voice matters, like I can make a difference when I work with this company, it makes me feel part of it.”
Testing participant
Final homepage mockup showing a brand message and content types above the fold, created based on feedback from user testing.
Project page
Spotlight people and partners
Within individual case study pages, we tested variants that emphasised different aspects of the work: the technical achievement, the strategic outcome, or the people and partners involved. Variants foregrounding partners and team members performed strongest. Participants consistently described these as more legitimate, trustworthy and human.
“I like how they have included the partners and the team, it makes it more legitimate and real.”
Testing participant
For a global engineering firm, this was a meaningful finding. In this sector, trust is built on people and relationships as well as on capabilities.
(Left) A services page section variant that gave prominence to the people delivering the work.
(Right) A team member section variant that surfaced the individuals behind a project.
The final project page mockup, based on user testing findings.
Typography
A custom typeface, tested
We also helped the brand team test the readability of the custom typeface NaN had developed for the identity. Participants rated it highly across the board for readability at body and display sizes, with no usability issues surfacing during other tests.
Custom GameChanger display font and Bienvenue text font created by NaN
Impact
Strong user tested designs
The project was always scoped as exploration, with a research-led report and tested directions as the deliverables. We handed over a substantive body of design thinking around IA, navigation, case studies, homepage structure, inclusivity messaging and accessibility, all validated in user testing rather than assertion.
The corporate site received a reskin for the brand launch rather than a ground-up overhaul. Deadlines and delays around strategy sign-off left no time to implement our recommendations in full ahead of launch. AtkinsRéalis are incorporating our findings into ongoing development of the site.
What the project did achieve was a clear shift in how the client thought about their corporate site. By the end of the engagement they understood the value of treating the site as a structural problem rather than a styling exercise: Strong IA, evidence-backed patterns for case studies and the homepage, and a concrete way of demonstrating inclusivity through interaction rather than statement. For Interbrand internally, the project also marked the first major delivery with the digital solutions team operating as part of the agency directly.
Lessons learned
What the project taught me about exploratory work
Most of these lessons are about what makes research-led design hold up against the realities of complex client engagements.
- Brand values land through structural choices, not decorative ones. The variants that performed best in testing were those where the site’s structure required something of the company itself — leading with named partners, embedding a poll that committed the company to listening. Variants that gestured at values through copy or styling alone did not test as well.
- Doing product design in parallel with other workstreams needs a deliberate working method. Working alongside strategy and brand workstreams that are themselves still being defined is difficult. The way through is to design at fidelities that honestly reflect how settled the inputs are, and to structure the work as iterative sprints rather than a linear path to a final deliverable.
- An exploration project’s value goes beyond design insights. This exploration project led the client to understand their own problem more clearly than they did at the start. AtkinsRéalis ended the engagement with a clearer view of how their website needed to work, even if the timeline did not allow for full implementation immediately.