STEM School Project REDESIGN

The communication director at the North Carolina School of Science and Math (NCSSM) recognized that there were issues with the the school website beyond aesthetics. She needed solutions to meet the needs of a large number of stakeholders.

We started by trying to understand current state of the website with two surveys. One was for the incoming students, another targeted their parents. I developed the surveys along with the staff of NCSSM. We then conducted in-person and remote interviews with 25 students, staff, and faculty. The data gathered was communicated in six personas like this one below.

Role

User Researcher, Content Strategist

Sample of a persona our team developed for this project

Sample of a persona our team developed for this project

Actions on this project

  • Stakeholder interviews 

  • User interviews

  • Survey development

  • Persona development

  • Communication plan

  • Message architecture

  • Page level content strategy

We also convinced the stakeholders that we should match the information architecture to the mental model of the target audiences we studied. The final website, seen below, streamlined the content. Much content was moved to an internal intranet so that the public-facing website could focus on the needs of prospective parents and students. 

 
Desktop with the browser showing the NCSSM website on it

Results

“How did you get him to tell you that?! ”
— Lisa Watts, Communication Director, NCSSM, upon hearing insights from a student interview

  • Uncovered what was most important to each group of website users so the NCSSM could develop impactful content

  • Convinced stakeholders to restrict the public facing website to focus on marketing and moved a significant amount of content internal

  • Provided two surveys that give baseline metrics to gage website satisfaction

  • Helped NCSSM gain hundreds of new sign-ups for the school newsletter since the new website launched