Building a website for a university AI network

RAIN is the Real World AI Network at UC San Diego. It pulls research, industry and entrepreneurship into one place, and it's hosted by the Societal Computing and Innovation Lab at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

We designed and built their website, rainucsd.org.

The problem: too many audiences

A student, a researcher and a company looking for AI talent all land on the same homepage. They want different things. If the site tries to talk to all of them at once, it ends up talking to nobody.

So the homepage does two jobs. It says what RAIN is in one line, and it sends each kind of visitor where they need to go.

One line, then clear doors

The headline says it plainly: the operating layer for real world AI at UC San Diego. No paragraph of mission statement before you get to the point.

Right under it are three buttons:

• Join the network
• Raindrop portal
• Read the constitution

New people join. Members go to the portal. Anyone who wants to know how RAIN is run reads the constitution. Nobody has to hunt.

Make it feel like the place

University sites can feel like a filing cabinet. RAIN is newer and moves faster than that, so the design leans into it: a deep, dark gradient, a serif headline with real presence, and a simple floating nav with Home, About, People, Events and Raindrop.

It still had to be easy to keep updated. People join, events change, and the team running it shouldn't need a developer for every edit.

What any organization can take from this

Before you design a single page, write down who visits and what each of them wants. Then make sure the homepage gets each of them one click closer.

Looks matter. Clear paths matter more.