SCOPE OF WORK

- Website design

ROLE

- Graphic design

- Web design, UI/UX design

DATE

- 2022-2023

WEBSITE

gsas.harvard.edu

With a mission to attract the most promising students and shape them into visionary scholars, innovative educators, and creative leaders, the Harvard Keith C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts And Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS) needed help to redesign the site in a way that was streamlined and accessible. At the same time, they also needed guidance on determining a new site architecture that would allow key audiences to find what they need on the site in an intuitive manner.

There were two major challenges to tackle:

1. Balance the well-established Harvard brand standards with a revitalized and modern approach that updated the website experience and better reflected what it’s like to attend the school today.

2. Present different types of content and information, together, in a cohesive and clear way that was curated for each of the top user groups that visit the website.

Working with the creative and strategy lead at Gravity Switch, Rachael Frank, it was clear that we needed to do something completely different with their navigation. Nearly everyone we spoke with expressed some level of frustration with the existing navigation and the inability to find things where they expected them to be. We employed a number of tactics, starting with a thorough site audit, to determine both site architecture and navigation options to create the best, most intuitive, pathways through the site.

We resolved the pain points and challenges facing the site using a variety of solutions:

— Create a mega menu with exposed navigation options, helping site visitors understand the relationships between types of information as well as indicate the depth of the site.

— Design audience-specific jump-off areas and correlating menus for the homepage.

— Improve the usability of the programs finder by adding extensive filter capabilities.

— Create a unique layout and menu for the news area to make it easier for site visitors to find and access the information they're looking for.

— Design an events component to be used throughout the site that catches the eye and clearly points a site visitor to the events calendar, which was difficult to find with the previous site.

— Create and design a Help Center page with resources that can be curated by who the site visitor is along with resource and policy information that is voted by visitors to be the most helpful.

The result was a visually and structurally striking accessible site that won 7 awards and was a Webby Honoree. High fives all around!