University College London

I worked with multiple academic departments to create a cohesive experience across a range of digital products.

Overview

UCL was established in 1826 by founders inspired by the radical ideas of Jeremy Bentham, it was the first university institution to be established in London, and the first in England to be entirely secular and to admit students regardless of their religion. They had found that with multiple departments, creating their own websites the overall brand was degrading and having a negative effect on user experience.

My role

Mark Boulton Design, along with the in-house web team were asked to redesign UCL’s homepage and work on the information architecture for two other sections of the website: prospective students, and current students. I worked as Senior Designer alongside Mark who led the project.

How we got there

As most universities are structured UCL was a series of departments, all of which had their own website, that was being developed in isolation from the others. We came in to look at their existing sites and work out how we could help in aiding the departments in creating sites that felt like they all belonged to the same institution. We conducted audits and interviews, created designs for the main sections and then abstracted the patterns so they could be used elsewhere.

Outcomes and lessons

Alongside page designs for the homepage, prospective students and current students pages we created a pattern library of components, named Indigo, which is still in active development today. We also wrote supporting content, which demonstrated how departments could still be creative but remain on-brand by using the established foundation.