02. From a 2013 Relic to a Live Research Platform
The old site dated back to 2013: a generic university template, one image per page, text-heavy and largely irrelevant to visitors. People left within a second. I initiated the replacement myself and built it entirely solo — research, design, code, and media production.
The constraint: the university only provides Wix Studio. So I designed the system from scratch in Figma, then translated it onto the platform — this wasn't filling in a template, it was building one.
- Research & Spec: Defined the problem, the audience, and the information architecture from zero.
- Design: Full visual system built in Figma.
- Build: Implemented in Wix Studio, with custom JavaScript where the CMS wasn't enough.
- Media Production: AI-assisted photography and video for a space that couldn't be shot directly.
03. The Real Problem: A Director as Human Bottleneck
Even a brochure site had a real operational problem hiding inside it. The institute director had become a human bottleneck: at least 12 people regularly contacted him directly just to book scanner time through the ERP system (Book-It-Lab), and he explained the same steps over and over, every time.
04. Turning a Bottleneck into a 6-Step Onboarding
Instead of adding another explanatory page, I designed a 6-step popup onboarding — a guided walkthrough the user clicks through to complete the entire booking process. Everyone who used to email the director gets routed there instead.
Result, from the director himself: recurring inquiries dropped from 12 regulars to zero.
The system didn't answer instead of the director — it taught users to do it themselves.
05. Producing Media for a Room You Can't Photograph
An MRI suite is a magnetic environment — most of what needed showing (the scanner, the scans, the space itself) couldn't be shot directly. The solution was source-based media production: I gathered raw material from multiple sources — old site assets, brain scans, eye-tracking footage, university photography — and fed it into AI models to generate new imagery and video.
Nothing shipped as raw output. I edited every asset, cleaned up the equipment spaces, and matched everything to the site's visual language.
Institute data, animated in After Effects. A physical constraint became a production pipeline: source → generate → edit — not an "AI image," a process.
06. Beyond Design: Building the System
I didn't just design the site — I built it. A CSS design system defines color, type scale, and button sizing consistently across every page.
- A styled button that grows sideways on hover.
- A team card that reveals role, responsibilities, and contact details on hover.
- A collapsible course menu that expands on click — CMS and code working together.
- A scroll-triggered animation system in Wix Studio, so every section animates in as you scroll.
Wix Studio gave the frame. The code gave it behavior.
07. Designing for Researchers, in English
Two audiences: existing researchers who need to book scanner time without getting stuck in the ERP process, and future researchers who need a reason to be interested in the institute at all. Onboarding serves the first; the visual experience serves the second.
I built the site in English by default. The real audience — researchers, biotech companies, international inquiries — works in English. Hebrew wasn't an actual need, just an institutional assumption. That call came from the user, not the template.
08. Solo, on a Constrained Platform
I designed without limits in Figma, then translated that system onto a platform the university mandated — some behavior needed real code because the CMS alone couldn't do it. And this was full solo: no team to consult, no developer handoff. Research, design, code, and media — all mine.
On my other case studies I was part of a team. Here, I was the entire team.
09. Three Takeaways
- Even a brochure site has a product. The real operational problem — the director as bottleneck — was hiding inside a project that was supposed to be a simple showcase. I still look for that pain point in projects that look flat on the surface.
- Constraints are material. A mandated platform and a room with no camera access both became design decisions, not excuses.
- A product decision is sometimes what you choose not to build. I dropped Hebrew because the actual user didn't need it — not everything that can be added should be.