Website Concept

Wismar University Website

Tasks:
Conception, Information Architecture
Tools:
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • HTML/CSS/JS
Year:
2015

The website of university really really needed a refresh. They still had a separate “jQery mobile” version instead of a responsive website. Plus approximately 30 additional sub-sites running on various systems. Short: it was a mess.

While it was clear that I won’t have the time to fully support the project until launch, I still wanted create a basic concept they could show stakeholders, build upon and refine. Since my screen designs where pretty rough and untested I never expected to see much left of them in the final website. But: Now its online, pretty much exactly how I created it. Have a look: hs-wismar.de

The main challenge here was coming up with a navigation concept that would be able to cover the hundreds of pages. My solution was a mega menu on large screens and some kind of accordion plus a lot of shortcuts on mobile sizes.
Without fully understanding all the content, knowing if it needed an update or was not needed anymore at all, I tried to bring some order to what I found and layed out an information hirarchy that made sense in my eyes. Cleaning up all the legacy content happened to occupy several generations of working students after me.