Bath Mental Health Research Group
A professional, accessible, funder-compliant website that gives a multi-strand NIHR research network a single, coherent digital home — and puts the team firmly in control of their own story.
The Challenge
The Bath Mental Health Research Group (Bath MHRG) is an NIHR-funded network working to improve youth mental health across Bath, North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire. Its work spans four distinct research strands — from digital self-help for common mental health difficulties, to supporting young people with neurodivergence, understanding and addressing drug use, and improving outcomes after adverse childhood experiences.
Presenting this breadth clearly, without flattening the complexity behind it, was the central design challenge. The site needed to speak to a wide range of audiences simultaneously: members of the public looking to understand the network’s work, health professionals and researchers considering collaboration, and young people and families who might want to get involved. Each of these groups brings very different expectations of what a credible, welcoming research website looks and feels like.
As an NIHR-funded programme, the site had to meet NIHR branding standards, satisfy current web accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.2), and be built with security best practice throughout.
The Solution
We began, as we always do, with the people the site is meant to serve. Young people and other stakeholders contributed directly to shaping both the design and the content, reflecting the same patient and public involvement (PPIE) ethos that sits at the heart of the network’s own research. Their input helped us strike the right balance between professional credibility and genuine accessibility — producing a site that feels as welcoming to a curious young person as it does to a senior researcher.
Working closely with the Bath MHRG team, we developed the information architecture collaboratively, finding a structure that gives each of the four research strands its own space while making it easy for any visitor to understand the network as a whole. We then supported the team through the content production process — advising on how to write clearly for diverse audiences, helping to edit and shape copy, and ensuring that even technically complex research could be communicated accessibly without losing its rigour.
The finished site is built on WordPress, giving the team full, independent control over their content from day one. No bottlenecks, no waiting for developers to make routine updates — their work moves quickly, and their website can keep pace.
Importantly, the site has also been built to grow. As Bath MHRG takes on new projects and partnerships, the structure and codebase are ready to accommodate them. The digital home we’ve created is designed to last for the life of the network and beyond, not just its launch.
