Designing the Scientific Certification Systems Web Site
Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) is the nation's first third-party certifier for testing pesticide residues in fresh produce and a market leader in their field. SCS offers a number of certification products for industries such as forestry, fisheries, manufacturing and electricity production. SCS asked us to redesign their outdated website and create an interface for a new web application that makes it easier for their food and agriculture clients to learn about organic certification and manage the certification process.
Positioning an Industry Leader
We began the SCS project with a design brief that included a key phrase:
“The site must communicate the intersection of sustainability, the environment
and business, while being neither “too environmental” nor “too business-like.”
We took this to mean: “Help us reach a broad range of clients across all of our industries without alienating the growers and buyers that make up the core of our environmental certification business.” To walk this fine line, we first developed a complete assessment of the SCS brand then created a look and feel that highlights each of SCS’s industries equally and still communicates directly their certification strengths in each field.
For each industry, we assigned a color-coded identity that is used throughout the site to accentuate pull quotes and taglines. As users move around the site from an industry like Forestry to an industry like Floral they see that SCS offers distinct services for each type of client. These color identities come together within the site’s main navigation to create a clean, consistent look that establishes SCS as a unified brand.
Online Tools for Growers, Inspectors and Buyers
The heart of the SCS site is a set of online toosl that help farmers in
the U.S. and Mexico manage and track the organic certification of their
crops. These multi-lingual tools are designed for users within the entire
food supply chain; from farmers to organic inspectors to certification verifiers
to large food buyers like grocery chains. The project adds transparency
to the organic certification process and helps farmers understand how organic
certification works and how it’s beneficial.
