Homepage Story Architecture

Homepage Story Architecture

Phase 2 wireframe for the homepage redesign. This document fixes the visitor journey before the Spatial Intelligence interaction is implemented.

Visitor journey

The homepage keeps About me as the second major section, preserving the personal homepage identity while making the research statement the spine of the rest of the page.

Sticky navigation
    |
Hero — Who I am / what I study / 10-second orientation
    |
About me — personal identity, position, affiliation, direct links
    |
Research question — why incomplete observations are not enough
    |
Spatial Intelligence — one definition and one unified physical-space visualization
    |                    (Physical World -> Perceive -> Represent -> Model ->
    |                     Reason & Predict -> Act)
    |
Featured Research — evidence for capabilities already established
    |
Past -> Present -> Future — why the research trajectory is continuous
    |
Publications — primary scholarly record and research artifacts
    |
Highlights — low-weight current timeline, only when there is meaningful news
    |
Footer / secondary pages — CV, Activities, Projects, Other Builds

Section contract

Order Section The one question it answers Heading / lede Primary CTA
1 Hero Who is Yimeng Liu and what is the research identity? Building Spatial Intelligence for the Physical World. / “AI should move from incomplete multimodal observations to persistent understanding of dynamic physical spaces—and support grounded action.” About me
2 About me Who is the person behind the agenda? About me / concise position, advisor, affiliation, and research interests Download CV
3 Research question What fundamental problem motivates the work? The physical world is only partially observed. / static recognition is not persistent spatial understanding See the research framework
4 Spatial Intelligence What does Spatial Intelligence mean operationally? From observation to grounded action. / the approved definition plus one visual system Scroll through the unified scene
5 Featured Research What capabilities has previous work demonstrated? Research capabilities, made concrete / each flagship project uses Research Question → Core Idea → Evidence → Result Read project / paper
6 Past → Present → Future Why is the research trajectory continuous? From sensing the physical world to understanding and acting within it. / foundations, current work, future agenda View the full research context
7 Publications Where is the scholarly record? Publication record / selected papers first, then the complete list PDF / Paper / Code / Dataset / BibTeX
8 Highlights Is there meaningful recent news? Recent milestones / low-weight timeline; no filler updates Full timeline

Copy and content decisions

Keep on the homepage

  • Yimeng Liu, Ph.D. candidate, Michigan State University, and the Spatial Intelligence identity-level statement.
  • The exact five-part research framework and the six-step visual sequence.
  • Hydra, Proteus, and Adonis as published capability evidence.
  • Cognitive Driving / Senior Driving Safety as an explicitly ongoing, human-centered bridge toward dynamic spatial reasoning and grounded action.
  • The past → present → future transition and the publication record.

Merge or shorten

  • Merge the current vision’s long “definition” and “future research agenda” prose into the research-question introduction, the visual captions, and the Phase 5 transition.
  • Replace repeated project “problem / contribution” paragraphs with compact evidence rows: question, idea, visual evidence, and result.
  • Keep the About facts, but remove research claims that repeat the hero and vision.
  • Keep Highlights only as a quiet factual timeline; it should not compete with the research statement.

Move to secondary pages

  • Full project descriptions, complete methods, extended experiment details, and all non-research builds belong on project pages.
  • CaspianPost remains available as a secondary build but is removed from the core research narrative.
  • Full service/activity history remains under Activities & service.

Copy budget

The new homepage should reduce explanatory prose by approximately 25–35% by using one shared visualization, short evidence labels, and links to details. Accuracy is not reduced: published, current, and future claims remain explicitly labeled.

Phase 2 acceptance

  • About me remains the second major section.
  • Every homepage section has one distinct visitor question.
  • The visitor journey is Who I am → problem → definition → progressive understanding → evidence → trajectory → record.
  • The unified visualization is reserved for Phase 3; no animation is required to accept this wireframe.
  • Unsupported LLM/CARLA driving language is excluded from the approved architecture.