NSCAD Extended Studies Website

Web Design

Project Overview

The goals and objectives of this project was to establish a fresh website for the NSCAD Extended Studies department. The most important qualities of the website were ensuring accessibility, organizing classes and their availability, as well as creating a clear calendar of events, exhibits and coursework. The process required utilizing the previous defined brand guidelines (see the NSCAD ES Branding Project) and working closely with the developers on the project.

Context and Objectives

What is the context behind this project? The NSCAD Extended Studies website began as a need for a distinct identity from the rest of the NSCAD University site. It also required a better portal and access to courses and their availability, which is when Destiny One was sought out by our team. Destiny One is a Student Management System that would allow for the team to have the website customized to their needs and update course availability and content without going through a team of developers after the website setup.

My Extended Studies team and myself began the project by working on building a list of the elements we wanted to have on the website. After narrowing down the various elements of the site, it came down to building various stages of the site, and working in tandem with weekly check-ups on the progression of the website work, as well as working closely with the Destiny One team.

Method

We began the project by discussing and developing a set of present pain-points with the former website. What student and teachers had mentioned about the site in the past, as well as including the Extended Studies staff’s opinions on what worked and what didn’t for them. Then, researching how the Destiny One Content Management System (CMS) had been used on other similar websites for our reference. Breaking these points down was instrumental in then developing wireframes, mocks, and eventually the CSS, carousel template and image templates.

Process

The challenges of the project was working within a distinct CMS that differed from any other CMS I had previously worked with (Squarespace, Wix, Webflow). It was much more specific to the needs of an education space, which meant functionality related to course availability and organization. Breaking down how the vast amount of resources and course content were to be organized was challenging but an exciting project in seeing all of the elements come together.

Challenges

The final product was a website with all of its elements set up for the future success of the Extended Studies team. This included implementing elements of the NSCAD Extended Studies Branding project I had completed earlier, as well as new templates to support any digital products on the site.

Solution