Building Flexible, Data-Driven Pathways For An Academic Innovator
1
The Background
When we began our partnership with The New School, they were charting a new academic approach to make the flexible learning modes pioneered during the pandemic permanent. To reflect this updated curriculum design, the university needed a site experience that moved its focus from an in-person Greenwich Village community to a global network of artists and innovators.
2
The Discoveries
We started with the homepage after discovering that most return users begin their sessions with direct entry on that screen. Then, we identified three jobs to move that traffic from early consideration to application: introduce users to the full range of individual schools, showcase the variety of academic offerings, and deliver impactful student stories.
3
The Strategy
On such critical site real estate, it was important to test page narratives and gameplan editorial strategies with users. So we conducted testing of page variations—from design through content—to devise a system that adapts to contexts specific to prospective students, faculty, parents, and influencers.
To bring our site strategy to life, we augmented The New School’s progressive design system to include exciting new engagement moments that drive users deeper into the university’s stories. To launch this work, we partnered with The New School’s marketing team in creating a measurement dashboard and analytics report that enables them to continually optimize the site’s efficacy.
We designed fluidity and a steady stream of content updates into the site’s entry points to convey that TNS is a place that is adapting, changing with the times, and challenging conventions. Each module communicates strategic messages to each audience. Additionally, their order on the page can be reconfigured to meet each audience’s evolving needs as their consideration deepens.
TNS is built on a legacy comprised of past and current students and faculty. Leading with these individuals ‘ work establishes relatable, multifaceted examples of who someone can become by attending the school.
