London-based Mikhail Riches are the UK’s leading architectural practice for sustainability and design.
Initially approached by the Mikhail Riches team and Deb Khan, VP of Culture at Kano and brand growth expert, there was a clear vision from the start. To make a visually delightful website which better catered for user experience than both their existing site and their competitors.
As with every project, our journey started with in-depth research into the web presence of competitors, industry-adjacent companies, and like-minded brands. We collaboratively reviewed each site’s user journeys, experiences, and aesthetics alongside our own to build a set of key founding principles the designs would be built upon.
We kicked into gear through our wireframing process, outlining all the content we wanted to be included on the site and clearly mapping user journeys. We wanted users to find key information as simply and efficiently as possible.
When moving on to prototyping, we began with mobile-first design. This forced us to be more concise with our copy and wider content, and also ensured that the primary viewport of the website was our priority when designing the overall look and feel.
After multiple iterations and revisions to our mobile designs, we expanded this base into the full desktop site. Our digital prototypes accommodated for responsive design, enabling us to create a consistent experience across all devices.
Finally, one of our key development challenges was ensuring the site wasn’t just user-friendly for viewers, but also for the Mikhail Riches team. This was for a variety of scenarios, including when they wanted to update their website with portfolio posts, team changes, or their monthly round-ups. To achieve this, we leveraged WordPress’s built-in blogging abilities, creating multiple custom post types and custom fields which created a straightforward “fill in the blanks” system where they can quickly upload changes without having to learn any new or complicated skills.
This project was completed on behalf of Hedgehog Studios.
