The University of Sunderland flagship website redesign
Dive into the details of how we won gold at HEIST for “Best Website” in 2018.
Generating an authentic experience for online events
“Being authentic” is perhaps the most overused phrase you’ll hear when engaging students online through digital open days, chat-bots and other online experiences. But you can really get to the heart of decision-making moments if you can leverage the right conversation, so working out what authenticity looks like for you will help you go in the right direction. This article aims to uncover some of the key considerations when engaging youth audiences online.
How AI can help colleges deal with huge volumes of enquiry
SMILE are the team behind the newly released Chesterfield College website. Along with a new visual language and website structure, we have utilised Artificial Intelligence to help ease a strain on internal resource.
An overhaul for Newman University
To rebrand the university, replace the hosting infrastructure, CMS and design of the Newman University flagship website, including the design of a course database system as well as overhaul and replace the current intranet system with a bespoke offering from…
Quick and dirty background video
Background video is a useful tool in a web designers toolkit. I’ll show you how quick and easy it is to pull together. You can see it on a whole swathe of websites now — probably (in part) due to technological reasons. It’s easier to code it up and it’s widely supported by browsers.
The Responsive Media Grid
How do you deal with an image (or video) in a shape-changing, responsive container? It's a common problem, and I've designed a system to help tackle it.
What students want from universities in 2017
"Large amounts of useless information", "Not enough important images", "All look the same", "Not entirely honest". These are all quotes from a group of students when asked what university websites are currently like. Students know what they want to see on websites, and what is currently being shown, is not it.
Understand your audience better with personas
University websites are primarily used to recruit and engage with students, but realistically they have multiple audiences to appease. It’s common for universities to forget about some of the other audiences such as parents, staff, academics.
Helping universities deal with the change in news: Timelines
News has changed a lot over the years, from being printed in newspapers and magazines, through video on the television and now people look online first. All of these mediums are very different but all have something in common. News has three states: Something that is happening, has happened and will happen. But the problem with most news sites is that they only ever consider the state of when it is happening. Weeks after, the story is lost — even if it is still important.
What is moment mapping?
What is moment mapping? Power is now in the hands of students, making it more pertinent for universities to be on their game with their recruitment. University web properties have multiple audiences. In most cases, the primary purpose is to engage…
Recruiting students with a purpose built digital platform
For the University of Birmingham.
Hacking higher education
At CASE Europe.