The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) does far more than host a world-class Annual Meeting. A global community of nearly 12,000 eye and vision scientists, ARVO advances its members’ work through publications, grants, advocacy, and career development.
Its website didn’t make that clear. Over time, the organization’s digital presence had grown crowded and inconsistent, making it harder for members to orient themselves and find what they needed. The issue, Mighty Citizen found, wasn’t lack of value, but how little of that value surfaced clearly online.
Today, the ARVO website reflects the full scope of the organization, not just its most visible moments. Members can understand what ARVO offers and how it’s all connected, where they fit, and how to engage more deeply over time. The result is a digital platform that supports the work ARVO does now and the discoveries still ahead.
The Problem: A Hidden Organization
ARVO’s digital fragmentation didn’t just make information harder to find. It changed how members understood the organization itself. They encountered ARVO as a set of disconnected moments rather than an international community with momentum.
Early-career researchers—those who most need steady guidance (and those most important to ARVO’s future)—often found no obvious place to begin. Meanwhile, seasoned scientists found little information that suggested how to deepen their involvement over time.
Inside ARVO, the web experience pulled in the opposite direction of the mission.
Separate sites and competing structures made it difficult for internal teams to present their work as part of a larger whole, even when programs were designed to work together.
Messaging and branding thinned out as they crossed from one property to the next, losing the clarity and energy the organization carried in person.
Programs that were designed to build on one another—such as funding opportunities that lead into conference participation or year-round education—lost that connection once they reached the page, leaving teams to communicate in isolation.
Research: What We Discovered
Members weren’t disengaged; they were disoriented.
ARVO holds a motherlode of exceptional material, often among the finest in the field, but much of it was unseen and underused.
Clear pathways were disguised. Funding opportunities and professional development programs sat deep in the sitemap, with little visibility into the financial support and impact available to members. As a result, users were forced to relearn the websites each time they returned.
The same problems appeared within individual pages. Critical information often landed halfway down the screen, obscured by years of accumulated content, scattered designs, and inflexible templates. Instead of serving as a friendly guide, the ARVO web properties were more like digital quicksand.
Architecture: Making ARVO Make Sense
We began by stepping back from pages and looking at how ARVO actually works. Not how its websites had grown over time, but how members should move through the organization as their needs change.
What should someone be able to find when they first arrive? How should ARVO introduce itself to those encountering the organization for the first time? And once someone is ready to go deeper, how clearly does the site show what involvement actually looks like?
Answering those questions meant reworking the structure from the ground up. Programs and resources, once isolated, were reorganized so their relationships were clear.
The goal was not to simplify ARVO’s work, but to make its depth easier to grasp without effort.
From there, we focused on how that structure would show up on the page.
Layouts were designed to support orientation rather than overload users. A persistent utility menu keeps the main site, Foundation, and Annual Meeting visibly connected. Information surfaces sooner, and patterns repeat in ways that help members build confidence over time.
To validate the new structure, we conducted tree tests—exercises that ask users to locate information within a stripped-down version of the sitemap. The results confirmed that the revised architecture made key pathways easier to find, with only a handful of targeted refinements needed.
Design: The Visual Layer
The new visual system brings consistency without flattening or sterilizing the ARVO’s character. Typography supports long-form reading without feeling heavy. Color stays restrained and keeps attention on the work. Imagery links the science to the world it exists to serve, often featuring real ARVO members and their work.
Now, motion is treated as part of the experience (rather than a flourish). The clearest expression of this thinking appears on the ARVO homepage. Early concepts focused tightly on the mechanics of vision science, but something felt missing.
The moment of realization for our design team was simple but profoundly helpful:
The final hero video reflects that shift, pairing imagery from vision research with moments drawn from the world it helps us see. The result is an introduction that feels grounded in science and open to possibility.
Mighty Citizen Can Help
ARVO’s story is not unusual. Many mission-driven organizations struggle with digital experiences that grow fragmented over time. Mighty Citizen helps organizations rebuild their digital foundations so structure, design, and strategy work together to support real engagement.
If your website feels harder to use than it should, we’d love to talk. Contact us now.