UCL is one of my longstanding clients and I have worked on a range of projects – big and small – for the university since 2014. 

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In 2019, the UCL School of European Languages, Culture, and Society (UCL SELCS) had a very large project they approached me to work on. The school was in the process of bringing together content from multiple older websites under a new, single site. The previous SELCS website itself also had a lot of content that had been added by different teams over a number of years. This had gradually made the website difficult to navigate and engage with. 

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I started the project with a content mapping exercise, identifying all the content that currently existed on the UCL SELCS website and on the other websites that were being  brought into the site. The key audience of the website was prospective students, so I ranked all content based on known prospective student needs. I also identified duplicate content to ensure I could apply the ‘single source of truth’ concept to the new website.

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The second phase of the project was user testing. I designed user testing scripts and put usability testing tools in place, before running in-person user testing sessions with individuals from key target audiences. This was an important part of the project for the team at UCL SELCS. Not only did they want to be certain the website was structured for maximising engagement with prospective students, they also wanted all content, structure and navigation decisions to be backed up with evidence. 

 

After analysing the user testing work, referring to the content mapping exercise and UCL’s website guidelines, plus drawing on best practice and UX copywriting guidelines, I created a new Information Architecture (IA). I explained the evidence base for the new IA on delivery to the UCL SELCS team, who proceeded to sign it off. 

I went on to implement the new IA using Drupal, moving all the relevant content to the correct places and removing all duplicate content. One of the deliverables was a newly structured UCL SELCS home page to highlight priority content for prospective students. I also created a further eight key landing pages, again incorporating priority content and clear navigation. I used UX copywriting principles to write all the navigational and call to action (CTA) labels, and wrote the home page and landing page content. I also liaised directly with the UCL Information Services Division (ISD) on some of the technical implementation aspects of the new IA. 

 

As well as launching the new website for UCL SELCS, I provided the team with some annotated pdfs, which would help them to create new content in the future based on the evidence I had gathered. I also pulled out some suggested content ideas that would help them engage with prospective students, based on the findings from the user testing work.