Higher Education Websites
overview
As a higher education professional, I often took on the role of website designer and developer. My responsibilities spanned UX design to programming and implementation. Here are a few websites I played a key role in developing.
award:
- Maroon Award for website design from the University of Minnesota Communicators Forum
the work
University of Minnesota (UMN)
College of Design Custom Responsive Website
To design the website, we interviewed stakeholders to understand their goals, usage, and content production process. We discovered a mismatch between desired outcomes and practical workflow. The solution? A custom-built website that prioritizes content accessibility and visual impact through images as textures. This website did not solve the problem of each department having its own website, but was a stepping stone in that direction.
I led the design and development of this project, building a custom CSS grid and using PHP to dynamically feature student and faculty work. The fully responsive site was built from scratch using PHP, JS, HTML, and CSS, without relying on a CMS. This project took six months to complete.
Collaborators: T. Tichich and Amelia Narigon
University of Minnesota (UMN)
College of Design Drupal Website
We eventually overhauled the College of Design website, consolidating multiple sites onto a single Drupal 9 platform. As co-chair of the redesign committee, I led UX design, art direction, and worked on content migration. The new site launched, offering a unified and user-friendly experience.
Collaborators: Amelia Narigon and Elza Thayer
Iowa State University (ISU)
College of Design Website
We were tasked with redesigning the Iowa State University College of Design website. Instead of a simple redesign, we proposed a cultural shift. By interviewing the marketing team and other stakeholders, we discovered a gap between their desires for the website and their current workflow. They wanted a fresh, image-driven site but lacked resources to produce large-scale content consistently.
To bridge this gap, we designed a site aligned with their workflow. We focused on audience-centric navigation, requiring content creators to categorize content for seamless integration. The layout emphasizes multiple smaller images, accommodating their existing resources while achieving the desired visual impact.
Collaborators: Alex Braidwood and Eric “Oz” Andren
