MIT CSAIL

Despite being the largest lab at MIT, with more than four decades of extraordinary achievement and consistent top rankings, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) was experiencing what its director termed “an identity crisis.” CSAIL was not well known, either within MIT or externally. And though the lab has an immensely interesting story to tell, that story wasn’t being told effectively.

CSAIL hired Libretto to rewrite its mission statement and its website, the goal being to attract not only more graduate students and faculty, but also – and equally as important – more funding partners in the wake of diminishing federal grants. Libretto interviewed key stakeholders and used their input about what makes CSAIL unique and valuable to craft a new mission statement that makes a clear and compelling case for support.

For the website, in addition to rewriting existing pages to make them more impactful, Libretto interviewed the leaders of key CSAIL projects and activities for a series of online profiles. These included the World Wide Web Consortium (featuring Consortium founder and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee), the Center for Robotics, and collaborations with Nokia and Quanta Computer.

Libretto collaborated with Stoltze Design, Nimble Partners, and Indigo Digital on the creation of the new site. Phase two of the redesign with continue in the coming months, integrating more technology and examples of work produced in the lab into the website, and allowing for an interactive user experience.

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