Inspiring students to see themselves at university

Universities: come for the complex content, stay for the amazing people

Universities are notoriously challenging in terms of content and stakeholder management. That’s why I love them as projects! They’re full of wonderful people, supporting students to be their best selves.

Massey University, like all universities, is a complicated environment with thousands of students, thousands of staff, and many other audiences. The sprawling Massey website reflected this complexity, with hundreds of thousands of pages, a labyrinthine IA, and a visual design put together over many years. Massey’s team cared about helping students, especially those under-represented at university, and wanted a website that helped future students to take their next step.

Simplifying content and processes

We carefully untangled the complexity to create:

• a new IA supporting an easy-to-navigate site, with content cut by more than half.

• clear content to make it easier for future students to apply.

• a robust content operations and design practice, which translated well into business as usual processes

• a Māori @ Massey section supporting the Māori Office’s team vision of fostering and promoting Māori success, and reflecting Massey’s commitment to using te reo Māori with meaning and purpose.

Approach

Understanding what prospective students need

University in Aotearoa is flexible, but this flexibility comes with complexity. We wanted to make it easier for future students to find their way to Massey. We carried out in-depth interviews, a survey, and top tasks research, with over 700 participants in total, alongside reviewing existing research and Google Analytics.

Unusually, future students don’t use a linear decision-making process. Although some information is needed by everyone, the importance of this information varies depending on the individual.

The website IA, content and design had to be tailored to give information relevant to different audiences’ needs, whilst being clear, understandable, and welcoming to people with little knowledge of university.

Enabling navigation through large amounts of content

The IA we created significantly reduced the volume of content, and made the site easier to navigate. I took senior stakeholders through the rationale for the change, easing their concerns through showing data from customer research, as well as an easy-to-use menu design, and a well-defined approach to creating on-page content.

Using te reo Māori with purpose and meaning

The team from Massey’s Māori Office created He Kaupapa Tuku Iho, guiding principles for Massey. We included their mahi in website product principles, which we used to guide content and design. This means we kept Massey’s goals of “prioritisation of equity for Māori”, “using te reo Māori with purpose and meaning” and “meaningful visibility of Māori students and Māori staff” at the heart of our content and design decisions. We worked closely with Massey’s Māori Office to make sure content and design took a Te Tiriti-led approach.

Large-scale content operations to support a team of amazing word wranglers

I managed a team of 11 content designers in three cities across Aotearoa, running an Agile content process to efficiently create and track audience-focused content. The large volume of content meant that a streamlined, well-understood process was essential to produce people-focused words to deadline. This large-scale content operations process translated into business as usual, ensuring Massey’s content team could maintain the quality of the IA and content.

Do you have a large-scale content challenge we can help with?