Solar Operations Maturity Institute (SOM Institute) — three website design options

Same content, three different brands. Open each one, scroll it on a phone as well as a desktop, and note which whole design — or which elements — to keep. Every "Take the survey" button opens the v4 survey (a review copy that collects nothing).

Identical in all three: the seven areas, the 0–5 spine and every level title and description; the four stakeholder paths; the partner wording (model by SolrBoost; benchmark run in partnership with the University of Cape Town, TruePoint South Africa and Partnerships for Growth); the model-history page; the privacy note; the survey link.

Different in all three: the brand mark and wordmark, palette, type, layout system, how the survey button stays on screen, and the tone of the copy.

Option 1Meridian

Research-institute, editorial. A serif journal voice on warm paper, deep navy with one solar-amber accent that only ever means "the sun". The mark is a sun-arc: six points from an empty ring at the horizon (level 0) to the amber sun at the meridian (level 5).

Landing page written as a long-form argument, section labels riding in a margin column.
Model page: a numbered ladder per area with a meridian line through the glyphs; an "index by level" reads the matrix the other way.
CTA: slim fixed top bar on desktop; on phones a fixed paper "folio" strip at the bottom edge.

Type: Newsreader + Source Sans 3 · Feels like: a university-backed benchmark.

Open Meridian Model page Model history Design notes

Option 2Grid

Instrument, engineering. Ink on paper with one acid-green accent reserved for the survey. The 7 × 6 maturity matrix is the hero graphic and the organising grid of the whole site; one rule drives every graphic — a level is a fill of level ÷ 5 — so nothing can be mistaken for a score.

Model page: the full matrix as a real table with a sticky spine header and a titles-only switch; one block per area on phones.
Datasheet-style facts ("the survey, specified"), tabular numerals, a visible 12-column ruler.
CTA: a full-height acid rail on the right edge of the desktop frame; a fixed bottom bar on phones.

Type: IBM Plex Sans / Condensed / Mono · Feels like: a measuring instrument.

Open Grid Model page Model history Design notes

Option 3Ascent

Warm, human, a movement to join. A dawn palette from night plum to gold, rounded geometry, everything drawn in CSS and SVG. The climb from 0 to 5 is a sunrise: the mark is a six-step staircase under a gold sun, and the page edges, bands and footer rise in the same six steps.

Copy addressed to each stakeholder in the second person — owner, provider, PPA parties — in the survey's own words.
Model page: each area as six cards on rising pedestals; a downward night-to-gold climb on phones.
CTA: a floating dark dock at the bottom of every viewport, with the gold button.

Type: Outfit + Plus Jakarta Sans (the survey's own face) · Feels like: an initiative anyone can join.

Open Ascent Model page Model history Design notes

Decisions these drafts are waiting on

Name — changed 2026-10-07. SolarInSightTracker (SIST) became the Solar Operations Maturity Institute (short name SOM Institute, wordmark SOMInstitute) across all three variants, their logos and metadata. The review URL path /sist/ is unchanged for now (the deploy script's -SubPath switches it). Background: naming-options.md and naming-somi-variations.md in this folder; trade marks and the final domain are still to be checked.
Partners — resolved 2026-10-07. The SOM Institute maturity model was developed by SolrBoost; the SOM Institute benchmark is run in partnership with the University of Cape Town, TruePoint South Africa and Partnerships for Growth (P4G). All four appear equally on every landing page; About, the footer, the privacy note and the new model-history page carry the model-vs-benchmark wording (brief §8). Nobody is called a founder. Still open: whether each partner gets a one-line role caption — none is shown, because the roles are unconfirmed.
Model history. Each variant now has a page on where the model comes from — the Capability Maturity Model lineage and what SolrBoost kept and changed. The research partner that gathered input for SolrBoost is deliberately unnamed.
Spelling. Built as "TruePoint South Africa" (the signed-off survey spec). If "TruPoint" is correct, each site changes it in one place in site.js plus a find-and-replace in its four pages.
Retention. The privacy pages state 12 months as fact; the spec called it a suggestion.
Survey length. The sites say "under ten minutes"; the survey's own intro says "about eight".
Fonts. All three load Google Fonts; self-host the chosen variant's fonts before launch (system fallbacks are already in place).
Search engines. Every draft page carries noindex, nofollow — remove it from the one that goes live.