A bilingual recruitment site for an Emory and Sciences Po study on immigrant integration in France, built to earn trust and turn interest into qualified participants.
A research team at Emory University, a sociology doctoral candidate and a professor, in collaboration with the Sciences Po Center for Research on Social Inequalities, needed participants for an IRB-approved study on how immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States experience life in France. The recruitment had to feel credible enough that strangers would share personal experiences, and clear enough that the right people would self-select in.
The audience is split across languages and three regions of origin, and they are being asked to give time in exchange for up to €40. Every design decision had to lower suspicion and reduce friction.
Direction: Calm, institutional, and warm rather than clinical. A cream and deep-ink palette with measured orange, gold, and slate accents, refined for the web from the study's printed recruitment card. Clean Inter typography and a generous, document-like layout that signals "real research, not a marketing survey."
Trust, deliberately: The page is structured around objections. A compensation breakdown up top (€15 survey plus €25 optional interview), a "real researchers, real safeguards" section naming the universities and the IRB number, an honest FAQ, and named contacts with real email addresses. Confidence comes from specifics.
System first: Designed in Figma fully on auto-layout, with shared color variables, a numeric scale, and a dozen Inter text styles across desktop and mobile in both English and French. Edit a token and it cascades through every frame and both languages.
Bilingual by architecture: A clean EN and FR toggle in the nav. All copy lives in a single translations object in JavaScript, the choice persists between visits, and it defaults to the visitor's browser language. One codebase, two fully native experiences.
Eligibility screener: A three-question check (age, residence in France, region of origin) that is neutral by design. No option is flagged as the "right" answer, and eligibility is only evaluated at the end. Qualifying visitors go straight to the survey, others get a gracious thank-you and a prompt to share. A real scannable QR code covers the offline path.
Shipped: Pure static HTML, CSS, and vanilla JS, no dependencies, responsive down through 980 and 560 breakpoints, auto-deployed to Vercel from GitHub. Live at study-recruitment-site.vercel.app.
The site is live and recruiting, with participants taking part across France, from Paris and Marseille to Toulouse and Montpellier. For an academic team, it converts a printed flyer and a grant into a credible, self-serve funnel that works in two languages and screens its own leads.
Research teams, nonprofits, and mission-driven work. If you need a site that earns trust and converts the right people, that is squarely what we do.