Client:
Vanguard University
Design & Coding:
Naomi Kasa
This student resource website was designed and built for an academic program. The goal of the website is to provide students with easy access to key information and department processes, largely form-driven. It included information and applications for the VU Sundance Program and VU Comm Fest. It needed to be simple to update, without cluttering the interface. A later revision to the site included a internship tracking database that automates evaluation requests and allows students to see their progress.
College students have short attention spans and little patience when it comes to finding information. Most access the web via mobile devices. However, administrators are typically more traditional and tend to want to organize content via menus and additional pages. They also often have little patience for learning new software. Balancing the needs of these two user profiles was key to the design of the site.
To prevent future site bloat, the site was designed mobile first, and menus were replaced with a central search function. Page templates have drag and drop ordering and clear text hierarchy. Strong typography and restrictions on image placement keep the layout of user-created pages clean and aesthetically pleasing. AJAX is used for content loading, and the site was coded to meet all accessibility standards.
Note: many of the programs and events this site supported have since been cut from the university curriculum, so the internship database is the only live portion of the site remaining.