Fifty years of rigor, on a site that shows it
WebsiteLogo
Sheps DATA+ is the technical arm of UNC's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, which has been doing this work since 1968. They build the platforms, data pipelines and HIPAA-ready environments that health research actually runs on, for investigators at UNC and for state agencies.
Their problem was being read as IT support. A center with that much institutional knowledge was getting shopped against vendors, so the site had to put the depth where nobody could miss it and give a principal investigator a path she could see herself walking before she ever picked up the phone. Being shopped against vendors is the problem most research centers bring me.
As we were going through the final product, I jokingly commented to our team “Wow, guys, we sound awesome!” … Adrial’s workshops and his expertise helped pull that message out of us.
The first scroll
Data that moves while you read
Three lit orbs ride a branching circuit as you scroll, each carrying its own weight, so they pull apart at the corners instead of moving in step. It is the whole pitch in one gesture: data traveling a system somebody built on purpose. A visitor works out what this team does before reading a word about it.
The headline
One sentence, five kinds of work
The headline keeps one promise and swaps the subject: infrastructure, dashboards, analytics, pipelines, platforms. A center that does five quite different things usually has to pick one for the hero or bury them in a list. This way the first line covers the range and still reads as a single claim.
Five ways in
Every capability answers one question
Custom web applications, data engineering, health data analytics, HIPAA-ready environments, grant writing support. Each is numbered, described in a sentence a researcher would recognize, and opens on its own. Somebody who arrived needing exactly one of the five finds it without reading the other four.
The objection
Names the roadblock before the reader does
Health research stalls on compliance, security review and data management, and everybody in the field knows it. The site says so first, then positions the team as the navigator through it. Naming the hard part is what separates a partner from a vendor, and it is the thing their buyer is actually worried about.
The plan
Five steps from idea to funded
Share your vision, map the solution, define the scope, secure the grant, launch and deliver. A researcher can see the whole engagement before committing to a call, including the part they dread, which is the technical section of the grant application. Reach the last step and the page throws confetti.
The easter egg
A groundhog who waits to be noticed
Cecil sits under the closing call to action with only his ears showing. Linger and he rises for a proper look; click and he shakes himself off. He is the kind of detail that gets screenshotted and sent round a department, which is a cheaper way to be remembered than anything you can buy.
The name
The man the groundhog is named for
Cecil honors Dr. Cecil G. Sheps, who founded the center in 1968 and believed the answers were under the surface. That is the whole reason the mascot is an animal that burrows. His biography opens right there in the page, so the story sits one click from the joke.
Proof
Real projects, with the numbers attached
A national platform carrying a multi-site study of more than 5,000 participants. Medicaid dashboards that cut reporting labor by 60 percent. Claims data turned into 500 million usable records. Named clients and real figures, which is what a researcher compares when deciding who to put in a grant application.
In their words
Researchers vouching to other researchers
Two investigators, both named, both from inside the university. In a field where the buyer is a principal investigator with a grant deadline, a quote from a peer inside the university carries further than any claim the team could make about itself. They sit beside the five things the center promises.
The mark
Their idea, drawn for every size
Somebody on the team sketched a groundhog, which was the right instinct and the hard part. I took it through a few rounds to get him friendly enough to put on a homepage and simple enough to survive a favicon. The Sheps(DATA)+ lockup sets him beside the name so the two always arrive together.
Under the hood
A lightbox that behaves
Cecil's biography opens as a real dialog: focus moves in and comes back where it started, Escape closes it, the page behind stops scrolling, and it honors a reduced-motion setting. The kind of thing a university gets audited on.
One type scale, checked
Body copy runs 18px at 1.75 line height and every inherited style was swept to match, so paragraphs, list items, links and buttons all land on the same rhythm with no drift page by page.
Motion that asks permission
Every animation on the page, the orbs, the headline, the confetti and Cecil himself, stands still for a visitor whose system asks for reduced motion.
Built for the phone it gets opened on
The design started on the desktop layout and was rebuilt to hold together at every width, which matters for a team whose readers open a link from an email on the way into a meeting.
Inquiries that reach a person
The contact form posts to a real inbox with the follow-up path worked out, so a researcher who writes in on a Friday is not waiting on a form that failed in silence.
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Craig WoodCEO, Definian
Your great work deserves to look great.
Twenty-five minutes. Tell me what you're trying to do and who needs to see it, and I'll tell you what I'd build first and roughly what it costs.