Designing an enterprise digital platform for a growing university

I led experience design for Western Sydney University as it rethought its digital presence following a major rebrand, creating a more useful experience for prospective students and a stronger platform for the organisation.

Year

2017

Client

Western Sydney University

Role

Lead experience designer

Contribution

Experience design • UX strategy • Information architecture • Product design

Designing for scale

The existing website needed to serve a large and complex university while making it easier for prospective students to explore study options and understand where different pathways could take them.

At the same time, the new experience needed to work at enterprise scale, supporting more than 16,000 pages of content, multiple internal stakeholders and a reusable Adobe Experience Manager platform.

Mapping content, structure and experience patterns to establish the foundations of the new university platform

Creating a platform around student needs

Working in multidisciplinary design sprints across UX, design and front-end development, alongside a specialist Adobe Experience Manager partner, we developed personas and user journeys, reworked the information architecture, and moved through concepts and prototypes into detailed design and reusable templates and components.

Rather than simply reorganising university content, we focused the experience around the decisions prospective students were trying to make. This included tools and pathways for future students, parents and career advisers.

Identifying student needs, behaviours and decision points

Turning course information into a more useful decision tool

An experience designed to scale

The result was a reusable, template-driven digital platform that gave Western Sydney University a more coherent framework for managing a substantial digital estate, while creating a clearer and more engaging experience for people considering their study and career options.

A template driven website that allowed content authors to roll out over 16,000 pages for university content.