Ginetta Portfolio

Basler & Hofmann

Basler & Hofmann

A top Swiss engineering firm with offices around the world, Basler & Hofmann has been setting benchmarks in engineering consultation, planning, and execution for over 50 years. Ginetta crafted a responsive CMS website capable of showcasing Basler & Hofmann's breadth of expertise and unique working environment, with the goal of attracting both new clients and new talent.

Engineering a website

1. A mobile first approach

These days a modern website is necessarily a responsive website. Designing for handheld devices first as a rule – «mobile first» – has also become a common practice, and it was the approach we took with the Basler Hofmann website. Designing within the constraint of limited screen space forced us to prioritize every single item of content on every page. On content-heavy websites, this is an absolute must.

Post-its approximate the screen size of a handheld device
Post-its approximate the screen size of a handheld device

2. Modular thinking

Transitioning projects from design to front end to back end development requires excellent communication. Everyone needs to be talking about the same thing. To ensure this would be the case, designers and developers collaborated on and documented interface modules long before the implementation phase began. Ultimately, our goal was to create a logical system of building blocks, making it simpler to add additional content to the website or to use existing code in new projects.

Modules are the basic building blocks of a website
Modules are the basic building blocks of a website

3. Design on-message

One of the tricky aspects of a corporate website is communicating brand values and making the right impression on your audience. Luckily, we have some experience in that field. Using semantic differentials, we evaluated users' impressions of the design. In tests, users overwhelmingly judged the website to be approachable, trustworthy, and professional.

Semantic differentials test whether the design is on-message
Semantic differentials test whether the design is on-message

User friendly scoped search

Basler & Hofmann's strength is their experience across a tremendous 80 fields of expertise. We developed a scoped search to allow users to restrict their search to projects in specific areas. To improve usability of the scoped search, we made it possible to search within the options — as the user types, they zero in on only those fields of expertise that are most likely the category they're looking for.

Screencast of a search within projects

Impressive on any device

The resulting website is optimized for small, medium, and large devices. Modularity gives editors the flexibility they need to create additional content without «breaking» the design.

Before and After
We had a blast building a scalable and modular digital presence for Basler & Hofmann.
  • João Figueiredo

    João Figueiredo

    Frontend

  • Jessica Goodson

    Jessica Goodson

    Design

  • Simone Reichlin

    Simone Reichlin

    User Research