Golden Gate University
Public Site, Intranet, and Student Dashboard
When we were approached to build all three of these Web sites/ applications for Golden Gate University, the first thing we said was: Why not save some time and money, and build just one site that would adjust to provide the right features & content to anyone as they log in? That was our single-most successful suggestion. The resulting Web Application integrates all three, seamlessly.
Web Site
http://www.ggu.edu
Year Built: 2003-2004
Project duration: 9 months
Zaudhaus role: Functional Specifications, Workflow, Interface Design
Services
Site Design & Development
Custom Web Applications
Industries
Education
Non-Profit
The Challenge:
Developing a consistent environment within a university is a big challenge - if not mostly for the fact that the navigation system is quite complex. Still, it's necessary to make the navigation system usable and not overwhelming. The combination of the navigation system requirements as well as the fact that we needed to develop a visual design framework that permitted the different divisions of the universtiy have some flexibility to create their own design made the project very difficult. Along with the fact that we were working with a vareity of personalities and visions that needed some universal alignment, we knew that our ultimate design solution needed to establish some strong consistency throughout.
The solution we came up with married many of the requirements successfully together - supporting the overall visual brand of the university with an improved user-experience and consistent navigation system. We spent a great deal of time working on and testing the multi-column navigation system. We were only able to provide a few examples of sites that had successfully used this model. Still, we knew it was the only way to keep the system simple, yet complete. We're most-proud of the Web-based content management system - that it places a very easy-to-use interface on top of Oracle's Portal Server 8 (which is no easy task). Even the most technically-challenged instructor/Admissions staff member was able to use the system to add content to the site. When Information World Magazine awarded it the 100-best award for use of information technology and interface for an educational site, we were most-pleased.
“Zaudhaus has exceled at taking complex web site strategies and content and turning them into effective designs and information architectures that simplify complexity and create engaging user experiences.”
- Anthony Hill, Chief Information Officer,
Golden Gate University
