Best of CASE District I Award
 

Institution: Concordia University

Title of entry: Bold new website for Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts

About this entry: The new website for Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts was the final phase of a multi-year project to overhaul their entire digital presence, which consisted of nine department subsites and the faculty website. Originally launched in 2014, in-house staff completely re-worked the website, shifting the focus to big, bold imagery that highlights students' work – and students at work.

We worked closely with stakeholders and held UX testing sessions with students. We responded to feedback about the original site and had a good idea of where we could improve the user experience for prospective and current students as well as support staff. What's more, the Faculty's workshops for wood, metal and digital fabrication (the Core Technical Centres), had been renovated; we not only wanted to celebrate the new space, but raise its profile in the navigation. Though these shops are "core", the user needed several mouse clicks to find the content, and pages used inconsistent nomenclature.

Fully responsive and accessible, the new site's headings and calls-to-action avoid jargon and offer a better ‘information scent’, improving the content's "findability". Since web maintenance is key to keeping the site fresh, our design strategy revolves around our web publishers, who need simple, manageable templates; images can easily be swapped when the need arises.