Ariel Group — Redesigning a 30-Year Leadership Institution for Global Scale
Ariel Group is a Boston-based executive leadership and communication consultancy trusted by Fortune 500 titans for over three decades. Despite their market prominence, their digital touchpoints had grown fragmented, dated, and unaligned with modern enterprise procurement. As Lead Designer, I spearheaded the complete redesign from discovery and buyer-intent IA to Ariel's first design system and 14+ responsive templates.
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Close leadership gaps in your organization with experiential leadership training, executive coaching, and AI-enabled communication advisory.
The Website was Holding a Premium Enterprise Brand Back
Ariel had built three decades of unmatched reputation through high-touch executive coaching and experiential workshops. Yet prospective enterprise buyers landing on the website encountered a disjointed, dated experience that failed to communicate authority or scale.
Internal Organizational Silos vs. Buyer Mental Model
The legacy navigation was organized around Ariel's internal curriculum codes rather than buyer intent. Enterprise VP of Talents and L&D directors searching for "Executive Presence" or "Cross-Functional Alignment" had to dig 2 to 3 clicks deep without finding relatable business challenges.
Zero Design System & Runaway Visual Debt
With over 14 bespoke page layouts created across years of ad-hoc marketing campaigns, there was no shared color hierarchy, typography scale, or reusable component library. Each page looked like an isolated microsite, eroding institutional credibility.
Buried High-Margin Strategic Initiatives
Ariel had developed modern offerings including their AI Practice Portal and High-Potential cohorts. However, these priority programs were buried under generic contact forms and obscure dropdown links, depriving the business of high-value inbound RFP opportunities.
Friction-Heavy Conversion Architecture
There was no unified call-to-action logic across templates. Enterprise buyers were presented with confusing multi-field generic contact forms rather than clear pathways tailored to self-selection (e.g. customized corporate workshops vs. open-enrollment webinars).
A Structured Approach to a Multi-Stakeholder Brief
Redesigning 14+ templates for a prestigious global client without an existing system required strict execution discipline: Discovery first, Architecture before UI, System before screens.
Discovery
Stakeholder interviews across marketing, sales, and executive coaching. Competitor benchmarking and an exhaustive audit of all legacy page assets.
Weeks 1 – 3Architecture
Rebuilding the site taxonomy from scratch. Formulating the dual "What We Solve" taxonomy (By Expertise vs. By Solution) and role-based filtering.
Weeks 4 – 5Design System
Constructing Ariel's first design system: tokens, editorial type scale, 8px grid, and reusable accessible components across light and dark modes.
Weeks 6 – 8UI & Handoff
Hi-fi Figma responsive screen production, interactive prototyping, executive client presentation, and comprehensive engineering handoff.
Weeks 9 – 12The Strategic Research Board that Governed Every Decision
Before drawing a single wireframe, our team synthesized discovery insights, strategic bets, and architectural risks onto an Atomic UX Research Canvas to align diverse executive stakeholders.
Restructuring Around How Enterprise Buyers Actually Think
B2B decision-makers do not arrive at a site wanting to browse internal service catalogs. They enter seeking solutions to specific operational friction (e.g. cross-functional silos, executive presence, AI adoption). We unified Ariel's services under a single intuitive "What We Solve" hierarchy.
Before — Legacy Navigation
Fragmented- Home
- About Us
- Our People
- Services
- Leadership Programs
- Team Effectiveness
- Keynotes
- Consulting
- Industries
- Healthcare
- Financial Services
- Technology
- Resources
- Blog
- Case Studies (Unfiltered)
- Contact (Passive standard form)
After — Redesigned Buyer-Centric IA
Unified Umbrella- What We Solve
- By Expertise (What Ariel Solves)
- Communicating with Presence & Storytelling
- Leading Teams Through AI Adoption
- Enabling Strategic Leadership & Change
- Building Trust & Cross-Functional Relationships
- Developing High-Performing Executive Teams
- By Solutions (How It's Delivered)
- Leadership & Communication Development
- Executive Coaching & Advisory
- Team & Organizational Development
- High-Potential Cohort Programs
- AI Practice Portal
- Ariel Difference (Experiential Heritage)
- Resources (Success Stories, eBooks, Ariel Library, Videos, Reinforcement)
- Events (AMA, Master Workshops, Webinars)
- About (Who We Are, Leadership Team, Social Impact, Careers)
- Let's Talk →
Strategic Rationale Behind the IA Restructure
How architectural restructuring directly mapped to enterprise sales acceleration:
Dual Taxonomy Pathways
Buyers looking for specific challenges enter via Expertise; procurement officers looking for training formats enter via Solutions. Neither is forced through an unnatural mental model.
Elevated Strategic Bets
Elevating the AI Practice Portal to top-level navigation instantly positioned Ariel as an AI-forward consultancy, driving inbound inquiries for modern leadership training.
Conversion Friction Elimination
Replacing a passive, buried contact link with a universal Let's Talk anchor established a visible and contextual conversion route from every template.
The Decisions that Defined the Redesign
Senior product design is not about making consensus choices; it is about defending principled tradeoffs under ambiguous business constraints. Here are the three defining forks in the road and what we deliberately rejected.
Should Expertise and Solutions be separate top-level nav items, or unified under one umbrella?
How should the newly minted AI Practice Portal be integrated into the navigation?
Should the homepage hero lead with Ariel's 30-year legacy, or the buyer's organizational tension?
Homepage Autoplay Video
Client requested a cinematic background reel. Declined: Autoplay video spikes LCP, degrades mobile performance, and distracts from core value messaging.
Duplicate Industry Pages
Originally scoped 3 standalone pages for Healthcare, Finance, and Tech. Cut after research: buyers seek challenge solutions. Added dynamic industry filter tags instead.
Generic Chatbot Widget
Proposed mid-project. Declined: A generic AI chatbot fragments the conversion path on high-ticket enterprise contracts where high-touch RFP consultation is expected.
Vanity "About Us" Dominance
Pushed back on placing "About Us" as the second nav item. Reorganized into rich, modular sub-pages (Who We Are, Team, Social Impact) under a cohesive section.
Ariel's First Design System — Built to Scale Across 14+ Templates
Before this engagement, Ariel had no centralized design system. Every page build was bespoke, causing severe UI divergence. We constructed an end-to-end design token system in Figma and CSS that enabled independent scaling by Ariel's internal engineering team.
Color Token Hierarchy (Click to Copy)
WCAG 2.1 AA CompliantOfficial Typography Hierarchy
8px Spatial Baseline Scale
Designed for Authority, Clarity, and Conversion
14+ purpose-built responsive templates engineered from the ground up on Ariel's new design system. Click any screen below to inspect full-resolution artifacts and UX specifications.
Solutions — By Challenge Architecture
Enables enterprise talent leaders to browse offerings organized by organizational outcome rather than internal business silos.
Expertise — Role-Based Self-Selection
Directs buyers to relevant leadership capabilities (e.g. strategic presence, trust building) with interactive role filters.
AI Practice Portal — Strategic Innovation
Elevated from a buried page into a marquee destination highlighting AI-enabled coaching and leader-AI collaboration.
Mega-Menu Architecture
Side-by-side taxonomy presentation under the 'What We Solve' umbrella with clear hierarchy, CTAs, and featured modules.
"Let's Talk" Enterprise Conversion Flow
Replaces the legacy contact form with a consultative inquiry funnel tailored for enterprise L&D scoping.
Resources & Success Stories Hub
Restructured repository categorizing case studies, eBooks, podcasts, and video reinforcement modules for self-serve discovery.
About & Executive Leadership
Celebrates Ariel's theatrical roots, global coaching network, and corporate social impact with editorial warmth.
Master Workshops & Events
Structured 3-tier event calendar facilitating registration for open-enrollment workshops and high-touch AMAs.
Live Editorial Photography & Tone
Authentic photography capturing high-energy executive presence and peer-to-peer facilitation across corporate settings.
Experiential Facilitation Modules
Visual modules illustrating core methodology: physical presence, vocal dynamics, emotional connection, and storytelling.
Measurable Success Defined Before Kickoff
In enterprise B2B engagements where post-launch analytics access is frequently restricted, seasoned product leaders align on pre-defined handoff criteria upfront. All four benchmarks were met at delivery.
Zero Re-Work First-Review Client Approval
All 14+ templates and the complete IA tree were presented to Ariel's leadership team and approved in the first review cycle with zero requests for architectural rollbacks. Front-loading strategic discovery made design sign-off a formality.
100% Component Handoff Adoption
Engineering implemented all 14+ responsive templates directly from the Figma component tokens without altering or re-interpreting base elements. The system survived implementation intact, proving its production readiness.
<60s Benchmark Task Completion
In internal navigation testing with cross-departmental stakeholders, participants located designated service scenarios in under 60 seconds with 100% accuracy, validating that the dual "What We Solve" taxonomy succeeded where the legacy site failed.
Brand Dignity Matched to Market Prominence
For the first time in years, Ariel's partners and global coaches actively celebrated the website as their primary sales collateral when pitching Fortune 500 enterprise accounts, transforming digital from a liability into a competitive asset.
What I Learned Directing Enterprise UX at Scale
A redesign with 30 years of established legacy, diverse stakeholder opinions, and no pre-existing system required leadership that went far beyond aesthetics.
IA is the Highest-Leverage Decision in B2B
Visual polish cannot salvage a broken mental model. Enterprise buyers refuse to decipher internal corporate hierarchies. Restructuring around buyer intent was the single highest-impact decision of the entire project.
Systems Require Cultural Buy-In, Not Just Tokens
Building components in Figma is only half the battle. Ensuring engineering and content teams adopt them requires transparent naming, documented rationale, and empathetic cross-functional communication.
Leadership Means Designing the Process First
As Lead Designer, my responsibility was to establish psychological safety and operational clarity for the design team. When the discovery and research processes are rigorous, design execution thrives.