UC Irvine

The University of California, Irvine is one of the nation’s top-ranked public universities. Students are passionate and outgoing, and connect with the school’s quirky personality (their mascot is the Anteater).

The PRoblem

The previous undergraduate admissions website was not conveying UCI’s brand, engaging users about why they should enroll, or housing meaningful content (many pages were simply link farms to external sites).

The Objective

We wanted to build a modern, accessible, best-in-class website; yield higher-caliber students for enrollment; and express the UCI brand story in a compelling way that engaged prospective students and those in positions of influence.

What I did: I developed the RFP articulating our desired goals and outcomes, forged partnerships with campus stakeholders to obtain buy-in and support, synthesized the vendor proposals, solicited internal feedback, and made strategic recommendations toward a final contract awardee.

Challenges

If you’ve ever worked in higher education, you know that it takes a long time for decisions to get made. We had a very tight timeframe to work within, and a lot of stakeholders to manage.

What I did: I served as the internal project lead and worked closely with the chosen agency throughout the entire process to ensure a timely completion of all deliverables. I secured approvals, made final decisions, and ultimately contributed to the project’s on-time, under-budget launch.

Design solution

Through research with students, we found that stepping foot onto campus and experiencing student life was a key factor in deciding to enroll. We designed the website to bring UCI’s campus and students directly to users.

We curated an Instagram feed of actual students to showcase campus life, emphasized greater exploration of our academic programs, and posted vlog updates of current students so users can watch their journey unfold.

What I did: I helped craft the creative vision of the new website with third-party photographers and videographers, assisted with the development of the new site navigation and wireframes, wrote all webpage copy, selected final imagery, and determined the layout and design of each webpage.