CampusPress reccommends SMILE for UK HE website projects
SMILE are now endorsed by CampusPress - the leading supplier of WordPress hosting to the HE sector globally.
UI Design
UI Design is a competitive advantage for universities and colleges when done well. We win awards for the websites we work on. It’s a match made in heaven.
You’re not competing with other universities for the attention of your audience. Turn your attention to out-of-sector brands with user interfaces that people enjoy using. These are your true competitors.
Don’t settle for sector-level mediocrity. We look outside the sector for ideas that have already demonstrated measurable success. Then we apply them to university and college websites. This low risk, high return strategy increases brand recognition and conversion rates.
SMILE can help you to improve your websites UI design and in turn, exceed your targets.
How we helped Falmouth University restructure their homepage and navigation
We embarked upon a project of research and recommendation, to focus on homepage and global navigation suggestions.
Redesigning a College Website Using Gutenberg Blocks
Bradford College is the first SMILE project designed and built to take full advantage of WordPress' new Gutenberg Editor. Jon Bates spoke to the key SMILE team members behind this project to find out more.
Helping the University of Sunderland calculate scholarships
As a long time supplier for the University of Sunderland, they approached us with an idea to reinvent the way that prospective students are able to calculator available scholarships.
A new morleycollege.ac.uk
We've been working with Morley College and Hunterlodge Advertising to launch a brand new morleycollege.ac.uk! We're excited to show you all this new project that we've been working on.
The difference between the needs of the user and stakeholder opinions and how feedback can affect a project
When it comes to redesigning a flagship website, a prospectus, or virtually anything that requires design input, there is a 99% chance that the client will have an opinion and thoughts to feedback (rightly so, they are paying for it).…
Finding inspiration for your UI/UX projects
Inspiration births some of the greatest ideas executed. If you have been designing interfaces for quite some time, there is a high chance you have felt unimpressed with some of your designs. This is usually resulting from the lack of variation plaguing UI design. Designers are often required to create similar components per project, this leads to repeated "patterns".
City, University of London: creating an interactive online celebration
City, University of London used our Hijack platform in order to create an interactive online celebration for students who’s physical Graduation had to be postponed. After the outbreak of COVID-19 towards the start of 2020, institutions have been rendered helpless…
How to navigate your brand while transitioning from print to web
In the past, when creating a brand, the primary focus has been on print and ensuring that colours and type are catered more towards the print market. As we move further into the 21st century and into a new decade, a brand's online presence and the way they market themselves online is becoming more and more of a primary focus. In this article, we evaluate how to navigate the transition from print to web.
Why is prototyping so important in designing new web properties for HE?
We recently wrote about our chosen design system - UXPin. One of the reasons we chose UXPin is its prototyping power. In this article, we'll take a look at how prototyping has evolved and the value it now brings to our educational clients.