The University of Southampton

Challenge

Telling but not showing selling points like ‘world-class facilities’ online to prospective applicants. This was potentially harmful to overall student recruitment and alienated international users.

Solution

• Surface information that explains teaching and study environments
• Create new template for all facilities including interactive video map to show spaces
• Create a sense of place from afar

What I did

• Ran content audit on existing facilities and equipment information
• Highlighted subjects that shared resources to complete site IA
• Collaborated with designers to understand when this information should be shown in the user journey
• Facilitated workshops with SMEs to discover key information about spaces that aligned to user needs
• Created content, sourced imagery and collaborated with developers to integrate virtual tours into template
• Tested virtual tour modal and iterated based on user feedback
• Collaborated with UI designer and developer to understand limitations of templates and how virtual tour and video content could be implemented to maximise user experience
• Created brief for video producer to capture content that would meet user needs on this topic as part of a beta roll out and post-live iteration

Identifying user needs, aims of content and lo-fi mock up examples for facility content

The impact

Collaborating on the alpha designs for facility and equipment meant we created a template and content pattern to meet core user needs that were previously missed.