In the fall of 1999, Luna Design was hired as a key member of the Knowledge Universe (KU) site redesign team. Since many
people were not familiar with the company, the focus of the redesign was to introduce KU and the companies it owns.
To solve this requirement, Luna Design created a hierarchical information architecture that allowed a visitor to start
with a high-level overview of KU, then drill down into one of the three KU initiatives for a medium-level overview or drill
down further into a detailed company profile as needed. Luna also designed a hierarchical navigation interface that allows
a casual user to browse around the site or a focused user to quickly zero-in on the exact information desired. Lastly, Luna
introduced color and image symbolism tied to the three KU initiatives to further reinforce which initiatives contained which
companies.
Some of the designs Luna Design worked on:
- Home Page - This page focuses on introducing the company and it's three main initiatives. It also contains a dynamic
"feature section" which Luna designed with a rotation mechanism similar to online banners where an administrator dictates
which features to show and how often.
- Companies Page - This page further introduces KU as a holding company of many smaller education companies. A chart
here displays the initiatives and the companies within each one. From here, the user can drill down to an initiative or
go further down into a company profile.
- Initiative Pages - Each of these pages drill further down into a single KU initiative, explaining the common theme
of the companies within it. A list of these companies and brief descriptions of each are also presented. From here, the
user can navigate laterally and see the other initiatives or drill down into individual companies.
- Company Profiles - Finally, the user can drill down to the company profile level where a single company is introduced
in detail. From here, the company can navigate laterally to see the other companies or jump back up to the Initiative level.
