Showcasing 40 years of Nottingham Business School
Nottingham Business School (NBS) at Nottingham Trent University recently turned 40. NTU asked SMILE to take charge in creating an online experience that allows users to learn more about the School and its community. In its 40-year existence, it has produced top entrepreneurs and business moguls, established a network for its alumni and worked on local, national and international projects that help move the School and University forward.
Taking inspiration from apps such as Spotify and Apple Music, we crafted a unique web experience for the upcoming NBS portal. The main interface sports a “bubble” pattern that nests topics for users to browse/explore. They loop about on the landing page providing a variety of content for users to interact with.
As a School with a rich history and culture, the ability to display all aspects of its community, its 40-year legacy and its projects, was a key objective for the project. We designed the interface to be as easy to navigate as possible, with a clean and minimal look to put focus on the content, not the design. Using varying shades of colours from their brand, we created a system that works well both in dark mode (only the homepage) and in light mode while maintaining accessibility.
We built custom templates for a gallery, profile pages and pages that host videos. All templates were tailored to give the best experience to the end-user by featuring large images, legible texts and accessible colours throughout. Overall, the NBS Explore website is the convergence of thoughtful design and content that prioritises the end user’s experiences.
