My Role
I led the UX strategy, content planning, and design direction for the project. I worked closely with stakeholders, content editors, developers, and photographers, bridging communication between admissions, marketing, and technical teams to deliver a site that met user needs, brand goals, and accessibility standards.
The Problem
The Office of Undergraduate Admission needed a redesign. Their last update was in 2013, and the site wasn’t accessible or responsive. Stakeholders felt it didn’t effectively communicate the university’s value, and users had difficulty finding information. They asked for more intuitive navigation, a refreshed visual design, and an overall better user experience aligned with prospective students’ needs.
The Solution
We grounded our redesign in user research and analytics. From there, we identified key areas for improvement and guided the redesign to focus on the most impactful changes:
- Clarified navigation with intuitive labels
- Created a vibrant visual design that showcases student life
- Made academic programs easier to find and search
- Built a responsive, engaging site
- Prioritized common user tasks (e.g. “How to apply”)
- Aligned site goals with university messaging
Get to know the users
We refined our understanding of visitors through multiple methods:
- A competitive review of peer university admission sites
- Usability testing of the existing site to surface pain points
- Google Analytics to identify usage patterns, popular searches, and traffic flows
- Interviews with stakeholders and student tour guides
- Synthesizing these inputs to develop personas (e.g. prospective student, parent, international student)
We interviewed key stakeholders and current student tour guides to get more information on who was utilizing the website. We paired that information with Google analytics to find usage patterns, popular topics and frequent search terms to help us come up with personas for the site (below is a summary of those personas).
Joe
Prospective Student
Joe is starting to explore his college options and is interested in going into engineering as well as chemistry. He wants to see what kind of programs are available at the university. While he knows that he has grades that are good enough to get into the university, he’s also interested in speaking with an admission officer to see how he can increase his chances of being accepted.
Priyanka
Parent
Priyanka has a daughter that is interested in attending CWRU but since they live out of state she’s unfamiliar with Cleveland. She’d like to learn more about the area as well as how safe it is. Lastly she knows that her daughter will need some kind of financial aid so she’s interested in seeing what the university offers.
Lia
International Student
Lia heard about Case Western Reserve University when an admission counselor visited her school. She thinks it would be a great opportunity to get her college education in the states. She’s interested in learning more about what campus life is like for students and also her ability to pursue and advanced degree after she graduates.
Information Architecture
The existing site had a very shallow navigation structure. We reorganized and relabeled content in a more intuitive way, then validated the new structure through in-person usability testing to ensure it performed as intended.
Rewriting Content and Wireframing
Because we were introducing new content, we rewrote pages to be web-optimized and student-focused. In parallel, we built wireframes to define content types and page layouts. One key challenge was designing a “program sorter” tool on the academics landing page — wireframing helped define needed tags and functionality.
Visual Design
Once wireframes were approved, I led visual explorations to bring life to the design. We wanted to capture the personality of CWRU and highlight the students. We:
- Used language students used to describe themselves (focused, gutsy, boundless, inquisitive, genuine)
- Commissioned campus photography to bring real student life into the visuals
- Created an interactive campus map with photo galleries
- Designed a dynamic student grid with animated photos to showcase stories
Drupal Build & Content Import
This project was our first time launching a site in Drupal 8. With a tight deadline—so the site would be ready by the start of the school year—we carefully planned content syndication and build structure:
- Created four separate sites to manage content syndication (Biographies, Programs, Site Info, etc.)
- Used Content Sync so editors could update content in one place and have it reflect across all relevant sites
- Built the interactive map and gallery modules
- Ensured full accessibility compliance across the site
Development and Quality Assurance
The development and content teams conducted thorough reviews:
- Checked page structures, permissions, redirects, and link integrity
- Verified headers, image alt tags, and accessibility features
- Coordinated with the University Technology team for go-live scheduling
- After launch, audited pages and redirects a second time to confirm everything worked