Legacy Millipore Navigation
Legacy Merck Navigation
Combined Nav Wireframe
During my time as Interactive Art Director at Millipore, the company was acquired by Merck KGaA, a chemicals company based in Darmstadt, Germany. Because Merck has a legal agreement not to use the 'Merck' name in the US (the company is known as EMD in the US), this introduced a host of nomenclature issues that needed to be handled on the website.
As the merger began, I worked through numerous UX & design comps as explorations of how we could handle the online purchases, language selection, and account information all within the top-level navigation of the site.
The images below show the legacy Millipore navigation, the legacy Merck navigation, and a proposal of how to combine the two into a cohesive and straightforward experience for customers of this new combined company. This nav was used on an interrim version of merckmillipore.com while a completely new website was built from the ground up.
Legacy Millipore Navigation
Legacy Merck Navigation
Combined Nav Wireframe
After presenting the navigation UX for approval, I then moved on to the UI/Visual design of the navigation. The image below shows the skinned version of the navigation.
Improvements to the navigation include the ability to see the price of the most recently added cart item and the cart total; increased whitespace around the logo (a brand requirement); a streamlined login / register process; content was minimalized in the header (removal of MSDS links, etc.) and the ability to click on "Recently Added Items" to view the cart.
Visual design added to the UX layoutsWith these simple layouts shipped off to business units for review, my team and I turned our attention to producing conceptual layouts for a completely new website that would take over the interrim site that the above images were designed for.
Through discussions with stakeholders within both companies, we produced designs that explored different ways to let customers easily navigate to their preferred products and applications. Since Merck is primarily a chemicals company, and Millipore deals infiltration and pharma production supplies, it was crucial to find ways to easily define navigation elements, to prevent any roadblocks within the navigation.
Conceptual Homepage Layout, with "Markets & Applications" Navigation Approach
Conceptual Subpage Layout, with with sidebar navigation for Solutions & Products
Seth is very detail-oriented Interactive Art Director, project manager and mentor. He took the time to understand client needs and delegated tasks to the team in a very pragmatic fashion. By ensuring all stakeholders were on board, he effectively mitigates scope creep while applying each team member's strength for the best possible outcome. The result: dozens of high-level, interactive products for a multi-billion industry that looked great—all delivered on-time and on budget thanks to effective planning and collaboration.
- Brant Nesbitt - Team Lead, Interactive Design at Sizmek, Inc.
