Thomson Reuters
A new mega-company has hit the street, and it’s called Thomson Reuters. With operations in 93 countries, a market capitalization in excess of $30 billion, and 50,000 employees, the new Thomson Reuters is now the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. It has the resources and experience to serve customers in the legal, financial, media, tax and accounting, scientific, and healthcare markets. Thomson Reuters was formed by Thomson’s acquisition of Reuters. It is with Thomson that we begin our story.
The beginning
In September of 2006, the Thomson Corporation approached Happy Cog to perform a much-needed redesign of their corporate website. We sensed that it would be a massive undertaking. Our suspicions were confirmed as we went to Thomson’s Stamford, CT headquarters and started sifting through the organization, structure, and presentation of the seemingly countless products and services Thomson offered.
Peeling the onion
Our team spent more than four months working with our counterparts at Thomson to identify, categorize, and prioritize decentralized product records and marketing content. We built a faceted, adaptable classification system that was applied to descriptions of products and services across Thomson's many business units. This gave Thomson the ability to easily accommodate organizational growth and change, as in the case of, say, an acquisition. Talk about foreshadowing!
Consistent, helpful copy is good design
Like many large companies, Thomson’s product information came from a myriad of sources across the organization. To create a consistent and user-friendly experience, Happy Cog created a detailed Content Guide, which offered general rules for content authors to follow, and created templates for product copy that Thomson could use as a foundation upon which to develop all product copy in a singular voice.
Redesigning a redesign
After all of the design and coding was complete, and not long before the scheduled launch of the newly redesigned Thomson.com, we learned of Thomson’s pending acquisition of Reuters. Thomson again turned to Happy Cog to modify the design and code we had cooling on the windowsill in order to integrate the new Thomson Reuters brand. Working with content provided by brand developer Interbrand and advertising and marketing agency Ogilvy, we made fast work of a daunting task, thanks to our standards-based methodology and accommodating information architecture.
Responsibilities
Research and development, usability testing, taxonomy definition, information architecture, content strategy, graphic design, user interface design, CSS/XHTML template development. Launched 17 April 2008.