JAX.org: Redesigning Research Discoverability for a Science-First Institution
Redesigning discoverability for a biomedical research institution — without a finalized brand
Organization: The Jackson Laboratory (JAX)
My Role: UX Designer — research, facilitation, wireframing, stakeholder management
Outcome: 54% increase in homepage hotspot traffic within one week; 100% increase in traffic to highlighted research pages within one month
Background
The Jackson Laboratory is a non-profit biomedical research institution operating across research, education, and commercial scientific products — all under one brand. For JAX scientists, web presence isn't just visibility. Their work needs to be discoverable to secure grants, attract talent, and build credibility within the scientific community.
The problem: the website wasn't working for them.
Problem
Faculty reported that their section of the site was hard to find. Homepage heat maps and Google Analytics confirmed what they suspected — users were being pulled toward JAX's commercial mouse sales operation rather than toward research. The organization's identity was muddled, and the people the site should have been championing most — its scientists — were effectively buried.
This wasn't a visual polish problem. It was a hierarchy problem.
Discovery and Research
I facilitated discovery sessions directly with JAX faculty to understand how they experienced the site and what they needed from it. From those sessions, I synthesized findings into a summary deck paired with analytics data, giving stakeholders a clear, evidence-based picture of the gap between user intent and current site behavior.
Key insight: the homepage was optimized for commerce, not for the institution's stated mission. Research — JAX's core identity — was competing with product sales for attention, and losing.
Design Strategy
The solution centered on a single principle: make the hierarchy reflect what JAX actually is.
That meant:
Surfacing JAX's three primary content areas prominently, giving users an immediate mental model of the organization
Leading with the JAX mission statement to anchor brand identity from the first scroll
Creating deliberate entry points into key research pages that had previously been invisible
Deprioritizing news to the bottom of the page — present, but no longer competing for prime real estate
I created three homepage mockups representing different approaches to this hierarchy. Each was distributed to stakeholders across departments with accompanying video walkthroughs to make the design rationale accessible to non-designers. The first concept was selected and refined through a collaborative review process.
The Constraint That Shaped Everything
JAX was mid-rebrand with an outside vendor — an ongoing process with no finalized timeline. This meant designing for a moving target.
Rather than treating this as a blocker, I used it as a design parameter: create a visual foundation flexible enough to absorb a new brand identity once finalized, while still representing a meaningful improvement to the current site. This required close coordination with the creative team to ensure assets, copy, and visual decisions wouldn't be throwaway work.
Results
The redesigned homepage went live and showed measurable impact quickly:
54% increase in hotspot traffic on the homepage within the first week
100% increase in traffic to highlighted research pages within one month
Stakeholder alignment across departments — including research, marketing, and leadership — on a shared vision for the site
For a non-profit where research discoverability directly supports grant funding, getting scientists seen isn't a UX nicety. It's tied to the institution's ability to do its work.
