Stanford

Commencement Weekend Responsive Website

Background

Commencement festivities attract thousands of family and friends to the Stanford campus over the course of several days. With so many people expected to reference the site from their phones, we needed to redesign the site with mobile users and resources in mind.

Goals

• Design a modern and bold theme for the entire site
• Completely revamp the content architecture for an intuitive menu
• Leverage resources like embedded Google maps (instead of PDF maps) and dynamic event listings (instead of maintaining duplicated content)

Original Site

To guide our decisions about design and information architecture, I started by investigating the most common pain points in attending Commencement. In so doing, we identified the top user personas;

Guests:
PARENTS, SIBLINGS, EXTENDED FAMILY, FRIENDS

• Plan travel around event dates and times
• Not necessarily familiar with campus or surrounding area
• Mobile

Students:
UNDERGRADUATE, GRADUATE

• Application process and deadlines
• Commencement event details
• Department ceremonies  

Faculty

• Commencement event details
• Regalia rental deadlines

Content Architecture

After creating rough outlines, I grouped information to match the needs of the guest persona since they would be least familiar with the campus.

Content Lifecycle & Peak Relevance

Although Commencement weekend occurs annually, I wanted to understand when specific content was most relevant to users.
To find out, I mapped several types of content against four stages; before, registration, active, and after.

Homepage Wireframes

Based upon the new user personas and their top questions, I began wireframing homepage concepts to accomplish the client’s primary goals of the website redesign.

Dynamic Event Information

To maximize exposure for Commencement Weekend events, I planned to host the event data on Stanford.edu and dynamically pull it into the Commencement website. This also streamlines annual updates and avoids duplicated content entry.

Final Execution