The University of Texas, Arlington

The University of Texas, Arlington (UTA) was looking to elevate their digital experience to improve their clout in the education sector, appeal to the student user, and increase conversion.

Role: Design Lead, Art Direction, Brand
Tools: Sketch, Invision, Adobe Photoshop
Year: 2018

Context

The University of Texas, Arlington is a public research university in Arlington, Texas. The university was founded in 1895 and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity." The 45,949 students that attend UTA make it the fourth-largest university in Texas. They are the third-largest producer of college graduates in Texas and offers over 180 baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral degree programs.

Project Goals:

  1. Design an explicitly and implicitly personalized web experience that drives conversion.

  2. Build a flexible design system and set of templates that would work across sub-sites

  3. Refine and evolve the brand to appeal to the audience

Project Notes:

UTA trusted my team to bring an energetic, yet respectable and intuitive interface to their online presence. To appeal to the target audience, the student, we knew we needed to go right to the source when making art decisions. So, we hosted a preference test for a few homepage directions with the students of the university, and this saturated design won by a significant measure. Gone are the days of predictable stock photography and outdated web components like carousels and ticker counters. We replaced these with hand-treated photos and streamlined .JS components that not only load faster but work responsively.

When developing a design system that would support the varying and complex needs of the content authors, every college was interviewed and asked what could be improved. From there we developed a set of page templates that hosted a flexible assortment of components, addressing the vast majority of content needs.

Result:

The stakeholders at UTA expressed their satisfaction with the modern, templated approach to the site build and felt confident that they could continue authoring pages using the design system we provided. When checking back after fall enrollment we found that their conversion metrics were improved significantly over the previous 5 years.