The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota

Home Agency Insights The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota

Hi, Hormel Institute,

We’ve combed through the work we’ve amassed over the years and hand-picked these case studies just for the Institute. As you likely know about us, most of our work is in higher education, biomedical research, health, and non-profit we have plenty to share in that space. There is a full range of creative, technical, and strategic know-how for you to fossilize just what kind of partner you will find in idfive.

Welcome Hormel Institute,

On this page, you’ll find the case studies we’ve selected especially for you. All of them showcase the talent, passion, and ingenuity we put into everything we do. Reach out if you have any questions!

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Setting a new standard in mental health care.

Four young adults chat over coffee at a table in a brightly lit common area with large windows on Sheppard Pratt's new campus

Sheppard Pratt Baltimore Washington Campus

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Sheppard Pratt Baltimore Washington Campus

Home Work Sheppard Pratt Baltimore Washington Campus

The Challenge

Sheppard Pratt needed to raise awareness for its new mental health facility near 1-95 and BWI, accessible to regional and national patients. How could they break through preconceived notions of what mental health “looks like” and introduce a new image of compassionate care in a space designed to promote dignity and compassion?

The Strategy

The opening of the Baltimore/Washington campus provided Sheppard Pratt with a unique opportunity. As it has done throughout its 150-year history, it is setting the standard of excellence in mental health care. With a humanistic, therapeutic design—patient rooms face wooded areas or interior courtyards, ensuring privacy and capitalizing on the healing power of nature—the new hospital shatters the mental health facility stereotype. We saw that the hospital could be a metaphor for where mental health is going, and destigmatize mental health treatment along the way. And opening in the midst of a pandemic, the hospital provided its patients and the region even more than unparalleled expertise: it provided hope.

The “Hope is Here” campaign encapsulated the positive emotional component of the Baltimore/Washington campus with a dual meaning: Sheppard Pratt is where people can find help, and a new facility is here to provide compassionate care.

Media

Campaign tactics and channels included:

Facebook retargeting and prospecting
Local news placements
Geo-fencing
Digital Audio
Digital Billboards
Underwriting radio spots on WYPR, the local NPR station
Light pole banners
Magazine spreads
Community center signage
Custom Logo Gobo Spotlight

Branding

The visual treatment positioned the new facility as a place of light, order, and calm, consistent with the space’s soft, warm color palettes. By utilizing some of the colors, layout, and the mandala graphic from Sheppard Pratt’s previous media campaign, the campaign provided brand continuity while introducing a bold, exciting new chapter for the organization.

Green

Light Green

Sky

4.4

The campaign search engine marketing CTR; the healthcare industry benchmark is 1.8%.

With mental health services needed now more than ever, I’m proud of the role our team played in building local awareness of the new Baltimore/Washington campus and its accessibility to everyone in the area.

Jill Sprague

Associate Director of Media

The Result

Across all platforms, the campaign performed at or above healthcare industry benchmarks

Leveraging the campaign’s success, ”Hope is Here” became the branding for the grand opening event, Sheppard Pratt’s 2021 annual report, and the hospital itself: www.sheppardpratt.org/hopeishere.

2.6

Million impressions from all campaign paid media sources

Creating tomorrow’s public health heroes.

A Drexel Dornsife student wearing glasses smiles while sitting on a bench with a slate wall background

Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health

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Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health

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The Challenges

Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health has a strong foothold in its Philadelphia hometown. At the same time, it’s a nationally ranked Top 20 school with a global reputation as a leader in urban public health.

Here’s how idfive told that impactful story to a diverse audience to increase applications for the program.

In 2019, the American Public Health Association held its Annual Meeting & Expo in Philadelphia, attracting over 17,000 attendees. Dornsife had an opportunity to make a powerful statement in its hometown. The event was also an opportunity to promote Dornsife’s Master in Public Health program to the public health community.

#1

School of Public Health in Philadelphia

Using lookalikes, retargeting, and contextual tactics we were able to boost enrollments 25% YoY - 35% when including online as well as in-person enrollments.

John Love

Senior Media Strategist

Marketing/Media

The campaign focuses on the school’s global impact while reinforcing Dornsife’s strong foothold in Philadelphia. With emotional imagery and stories of Drexel Dornsife students and faculty who are solving public health problems locally and across the globe, the creative serves as both lead generation and general awareness messaging for a targeted campaign that supports Drexel Dornsife’s admissions team efforts to increase MPH program enrollments by 25% by:

Increasing brand awareness:

The volume of branded search keyword traffic to the Drexel Dornsife site
The number and frequency of ad impressions

Engaging qualified prospects

The number of requests for information submitted through the landing page
Amount of social media campaign engagement (likes, shares, comments, etc.)
Click through rates for campaign tactics

Event Promotion

idfive created an experiential conference space, sponsorship banners, charging stations, and print ads to boost brand awareness. The environmentals offered compelling stories about education and research — from national safety for firemen to research about the inequality of health in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. The campaign included strategic billboard placements and delivered ads to audiences in close proximity to the conference center to capitalize on the convention to support awareness of Dornsife’s differentiators .

Refocusing on the heart of public health.

A young girl smiles while being chased by two other children in a game of tag

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Feel Good

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Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Feel Good

Home Work Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Feel Good

The Challenge

Regularly atop the U.S. News rankings, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health wanted to build on its success with an integrated campaign to attract the best public health students in the world. As a trusted partner that had previously produced award-winning work for the school, idfive was brought in to help.

The Strategy

Working with the school, idfive created an advertising campaign to appeal to the hearts and heads of top-tier students. The “Feel Good” campaign includes banner ads and magazine print ads, as well as a landing page that collects and funnels prospective students to the admissions team. Targeted to top prospects, the campaign invites students to join a school whose mission isn’t just to educate but to advance research and save lives.

The optimistic tagline “feel good about the future of the human race”—excerpted from a speech given by the school’s dean—is supported in print ads and a landing page with real stories about students, faculty, and researchers who’ve made a significant impact on the public health community. As the first-ever national campaign in the school’s 100-year history, the series of ads both persuaded top students to apply and promoted the school’s brand and public health significance to a national audience.

Results

With enhanced brand awareness and positioning as a mission-based—and mission-first—institution, the Bloomberg School strengthened its position as the largest and most highly ranked school of public health in the world.

The “Feel Good” campaign received a Collegiate Advertising Gold Award for web advertising.

Welcome to the new Evergreen Health

Evergreen Health

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Evergreen Health

Home Work Evergreen Health

How to build greater awareness and affinity among Maryland residents and brokers?

Evergreen Health was a Maryland based health insurance provider, established in 2012 as a result of the Affordable Care Act. While a majority of the smaller health care companies created with the affordable care act to serve as alternatives to larger, nationwide insurance failed, Evergreen Health found success. But to continue competing with larger insurance carriers and succeed at its mission to bring honest and affordable healthcare to Marylanders, Evergreen had to build greater awareness and affinity among Maryland residents—a challenge that required a refined brand, a new website and a fully integrated marketing campaign.

Strategy

Supported by extensive research into Evergreen Health’s audiences and company goals, the “Healthcare. Only braver.” campaign was designed to increase insurance enrollment while introducing Evergreen Health as a company that provides smart, honest, and affordable high quality health insurance. idfive was able to enhance the brand with new design elements, a new tagline and a brand mascot that embodies the unique insurance carrier.

everGREEN

With these brand elements in effect, a variety of integrated marketing tactics including banner advertisements, email marketing, advertorials and an e-book entitled “The World’s Easiest Health Insurance Guide (EVER)”, drove leads to unique landing pages and a redesigned website. With the e-book especially, the company was able to commit to their mission of demystifying healthcare and assisting families and individuals, while at the same time gathering interested leads for the sales team. In a field dominated by large corporations, Evergreen Health was able to stand out as a truly approachable, technologically disruptive and ethically committed health insurance option.

Building a universal brand for astrophysics.

Deep space photograph displays a distant star cluster and nebula

Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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The Challenge

Since its founding over half a century ago, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian became one of the leading astronomy and astrophysics centers in the world. But brilliant research didn’t necessarily translate into a brand that told a clear story of who they are and how their discoveries continue to expand humanity’s knowledge of our universe.

Research

We began our engagement with CfA with a two-pronged approach, reviewing existing communications and interviewing some of their top researchers and leadership. To gain an outside view, we also interviewed research partners, funders, and advisory board members. We had two clear goals in mind: understand the CfA, and find out how they’re perceived by the world.

850+

Researchers and staff.

For a life-long space nerd like me, working with CfA was an amazing experience. It was such an incredible privilege to get to interview some of the leading astronomers and astrophysicists in the world and learn more about the discoveries CfA has made and continues to make every day. I know all of us at idfive are immensely proud of the fact that our work is helping CfA tell their story better so they can continue to expand humanity’s understanding of the universe.

Sean Carton

Chief Strategist

Strategy

Our research revealed two key data points: 1) The CfA is regarded as one of the world’s leading astrophysics organizations; but 2) nobody really understood their structure, and that misunderstanding often led to difficulties in securing funding or recruiting scientists. They were doing some of the most amazing science in the world, but outsiders were confused about who was doing it.

Branding

We realized that in order to tell the true story of CfA, their name had to change. We wanted it to communicate CfA’s preeminent position in astronomy and astrophysics while communicating the equity of Harvard’s and the Smithsonian’s contributions. The new name – The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian did exactly that, emphasizing science over structure.

Design

We wanted to create a visual presentation of the new name to reflect the CfA’s long commitment to science and collaborative discovery. The symbolic gradient of the logo is reminiscent of a stellar spectrum—a key tool of astronomy instantly recognizable by their external audiences—while the logo’s contemporary typography speaks to both today and tomorrow’s discoveries.

CFA RED

CFA VIOLET

Website

The redesigned CfA website, published in March 2021, features copy guided by updated messaging and a design informed by updated brand visuals. The website’s content strategy puts science first by prioritizing ongoing research via a “Big Questions” section, and highlighting research, people, and facilities within the navigation.

Conclusion

Through all of our work, idfive has helped the CfA navigate a complicated institutional environment to ultimately implement a clear, compelling, and consistent brand that speaks to both internal and external audiences. United and energized by the new brand and marketing, communications, and fundraising tools, the CfA can now focus on the incredible research and discoveries that lie ahead.

Showcasing the depth of a lakeside leader.

Carthage College

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Carthage College

Home Work Carthage College

The Challenge

With its stunning location, market-focused academic offerings, and comprehensive career development program, Carthage College’s liberal arts education continues to evolve to meet changing needs. But many students and families don’t know that it’s an opportunity that’s within their reach.

Carthage needed a redesigned website that speaks boldly of its promise, achievements, and vision for the future.

Strategy

idfive’s comprehensive discovery phase—including a complete site audit and extensive stakeholder interviews—revealed that Carthage had a powerful story to tell. The College’s website had solid fundamentals in place, but definitely needed a refresh: a lot had happened at Carthage and in the world since the site was launched in 2016. To take the next step, we needed to:

Develop a unifying theme to tell the Carthage story more succinctly, effectively, and boldly
Challenge expectations of what a college website is
Take the website from good to great.

UX

As we worked collaboratively with the Carthage marketing and communications team, clear themes began to emerge that would inform and unify the site’s architecture, design, and content. Chief among these were the deep personal connections that students made at the College; the spirit of exploration and discovery that is instilled in the culture; and a uniquely beautiful lakefront setting, an hour’s drive from the vibrant urban centers of Chicago and Milwaukee.

Design

Balancing Carthage’s distinctive primary red with a secondary blue palette reinforces one of Carthage’s major differentiators: it’s distinctive Lake Michigan shoreline. Wave motifs, reflected both horizontally and vertically, continue the theme and connect with the hero image headline: Your Turn To Make Waves.

156

Total number of Carthage stakeholders engaged in the discovery process

“This project wouldn’t have been possible without the support and insight of the Carthage team. My only regret is not getting to see beautiful Lake Michigan in person.”

Andrew White

Director of User Experience and Information Design, idfive

Media Buying & Planning

Early campaign results attribute a 44% increase in enrollment applications in the first 4 months of the campaign compared to the previous period and 11% increase YOY.

44%

increase in apps received in the first 4 months

The Results

The early response from the Carthage community was overwhelmingly positive, as reflected in these Instagram posts:

“Lookin good” 😍 😉
“It looks awesome!”

More than that, however, the recruitment campaign is delivering a substantial boost in qualified applications.

Recentering a leading pharmacy school.

Three University of Maryland School of Pharmacy students wearing lab coats smile while standing in front of a building on campus

UMD School of Pharmacy

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UMD School of Pharmacy

Home Work UMD School of Pharmacy

The Challenge

The school needed a site that was accessible and intuitive enough to help their diverse audiences navigate a complex site. The existing website design, interaction, and architecture didn’t accurately reflect the school’s brand of innovation, responsibility, and excellence—all of which play a central role in attracting new students. The school was also challenged to develop a balanced message that resonated with very diverse prospects applying to different pharmacy research and practice programs.

The Solution

idfive’s Discover360™ helped to build consensus around data and hard facts. We developed a site strategy, design, and information architecture that supported the school’s defining brand—and emphasized their position at the center of industry, research, and education. The site also employs the best practices of SEO, responsive design, and usability to enhance the user experience on all platforms and devices. And while its bold design highlights what makes them different, it adheres to proven higher ed web standards.

Celebrating 200 years.

Colgate students hurry to their classes on a sunny day in early fall, the chapel visible in the background

Colgate University

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Colgate University

Home Work Colgate University

Colgate University, a prestigious private university in central New York, is globally recognized for offering an innovative curriculum and an experience dedicated to career outcomes, on a sprawling, bucolic, rustic campus. Showcasing the Colgate experience cohesively across several digital touchpoints was a rewarding opportunity that continues to evolve through our ongoing partnership.

“Finding the right partner may have been our most important step. We understood that we were not only seeking a partner to build our website but one who would also fill the role of the teacher as we learned a new hosting environment and CMS.”

Jason Kammerdiener

Web Manager, Colgate University

The Challenge

Colgate wanted to upgrade their CMS to a more modern, sustainable platform. With the help of idfive, this project underwent an intensive stakeholder discovery to determine the priorities, requirements, functionality, and architecture needed to support a bustling, evolving institution.

The Result

The result was a beautifully redesigned site built on the Drupal 8 CMS platform, with the flexibility to continue to grow. With more than 1,500 pages migrated by a hybrid team of Colgate staff and idfivers, the new site was positively received by the Colgate community immediately upon launch.

200

Years of history to share

“The idfive team really had fun with this project! Partnering with Colgate to tell a story that means so much to alumni, current students, faculty and the surrounding Hamilton, NY community was rewarding. The site enables visitors to relive a sense of pride and look forward to a Colgate’s dynamic future.”

Jake Tarbert

Associate VP

The Challenge

How do you tell the story of a venerable institution’s two-century legacy without getting lost in the past? How do we bring history to life while positioning a bold vision for the future? Taking both of these challenges to mind, idfive developed a content strategy based on historic artifacts, an interactive timeline, and an invitation for the community to share their own Colgate experiences.

The Result

With an enhanced design developed to embrace and celebrate this golden celebration, we launched a site that worked flawlessly across every platform and blended seamlessly into the architecture of the main Colgate website.

The Challenge

When the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 brought campus visits for prospective students to a halt, Colgate recognized that digitally showcasing the full Colgate experience – campus included – was paramount to encouraging students to commit. Colgate turned to idfive to translate their This is Colgate and Outcomes printed viewbooks into rich, engaging online experiences for prospective students and their families.

To keep these online Viewbooks sustainable year-over-year, we developed an information architecture and modular user experience that allowed content to be interchangeable and updatable as information about the University changed while retaining the flow and narrative of the Viewbooks’ print counterparts.

The Result

The site was then designed and developed to be CMS-agnostic, for maximum flexibility. The result was a collaborative content migration and a rapid launch to reach prospects during commitment season.

The Partnership Continues

In addition to major projects with our partners at Colgate, idfive serves as the University’s web and digital support partner. Building a lasting understanding of Colgate’s diverse digital landscape, we’re able to continue being nimble, responsive, and effective to meet the needs of this vibrant institution.

Expressing the wonder of space exploration.

Nighttime photo of the Milky Way visible over a mountainous horizon

Johns Hopkins APL Civil Space

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Johns Hopkins APL Civil Space

Home Work Johns Hopkins APL Civil Space

The Challenge

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Civil Space project needed a brand new website to communicate the magnitude and “cool factor” of their work — from defending the planet from asteroids to unraveling the mysteries of the universe — to multiple audiences. And they needed it in nine months. It was rocket science. Literally.

Check out the APL Civil Space website.

Going Boldly

Sure, idfive developers had created interactive maps before. But to meet the challenge of galaxy travel, they created a destination map of the universe — going boldly where no developers have gone before.

Number of templates, including an interactive galaxy map

Strategy

Following our tried-and-true script, an idfive team kicked off the project with our Discover360™ process. We spoke with scientists, engineers, management, marketers, and educators. [A side note: These are some awesome, inspiring folks, some of whom worked on the country’s first space program in the ’60s.] We surveyed a wide cross-section of potential site visitors. We geeked out on web analytics and content audits (not to mention interstellar space), and scoped out what others in the field are doing. Armed with all of that data, we were able to share with our partners a creative brief and strategic direction that would inform everything from site architecture to design. Our aha moment: The site needed to appeal to a wide range of audiences — from middle-school students to rocket scientists — without confusing the one or condescending to the other.

Then COVID-19 hit.

But the idfive team and our APL Civil Space partners refused to let a global pandemic get in the way of our momentum. We switched our brainstorming workshop to a virtual format and presented the first rounds of a proposed Information Architecture and wireframes. Following revisions and approvals, we moved to the design phase and presented three concepts. Elements from all three were incorporated into the final design.

To meet the tight timeline and maximize budget, our developers completed the front- and back-end work concurrently with the design phase, relishing challenges like building a map-of-the-galaxy app. Our copywriters made sure that the final copy would appeal to space novices and rocket scientists alike.

Design

The visuals needed to be as awe-inspiring and compelling as space itself. Our design “North Star,” as pointed out in the project creative brief: “Think of the first time you saw the night sky on a clear, moonless night — away from artificial light or interference.” One picture = 1,000 words.

Development

idfive developers took the challenge of engaging site visitors to a new level by creating a Drupal 8 widget with Augmented Reality and 3-D assets that delivers state-of-the-art space instruments to your screen. Or maybe you have an iOS and want to drop the New Horizons spacecraft on your kitchen counter.

Conclusion

The APL Civil Space website engages school children, rocket scientists, and everyone in between with a richly visual, highly interactive experience — one that piques curiosity, encourages further exploration, and induces wonder. Just like the night sky on a clear, moonless night.

Giving voice to the liberal arts.

Three U-Dub students sit on a bench on campus

University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences

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University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences

Home Work University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences

The Challenge

In a world dominated by science, technology, engineering and mathematics, what is the role of the liberal arts? After all, if the “value” of a college education is the immediate return on investment, how can the liberal arts compete with highly-valued majors such as engineering or the applied sciences (eg. computer science)?

Strategy

Our Discover360 process also revealed that the University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences also suffered from a crisis of identity: at a university dominated by scientific research and technological innovation what was the role of the College in the entire UW web ecosystem? The answer came from the students we spoke to. What they cared about was what interested them. Out of this insight came the philosophy that drove our redesign efforts: “Let the Majors Speak for, and Define, The College.”

Design

If the majors were going to speak for the College, the design had to feature their essence: the students and their environments at the university. Our design concept put the people of the College first, highlighting their diversity and their activities while studying at one of the most beautiful institutions in the United States.

Development

At a time when many Colleges of Arts & Sciences/Liberal Arts were shying away from their liberal arts roots, the UW College of Arts and Sciences decided to prioritize their commitment to the liberal arts, emphasizing the liberal arts’ relevance to 21st-century work. We communicated this through interactive tools for prospective students to show that the liberal arts and sciences could lead directly to fulfilling careers.

Conclusion

Our redesign has helped the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington redefine what it means to study the liberal arts in the 21st century, emphasizing both the diversity of thought and the diversity of the student body of the College. Through the use of both stunning imagery and interactive tools that help visitors discover what the liberal arts can mean in the twenty-first century, the new website doesn’t just open up the College to a new generation of visitors but also helps recontextualize and more sharply define the College’s role as part of the greater University of Washington.

Advocating for the arts and the humanities.

An elaborately costumed dancer twirls during a staged production, causing a long rainbow banner to billow outward into a spiral

UMD Arts & Humanities

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UMD Arts & Humanities

Home Work UMD Arts & Humanities

The Challenge

For the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities, a website redesign was an opportunity to bolster the reputation of the college for both internal and external audiences. While the college serves a majority of the University’s students through core education requirements, it isn’t always thought of as its own entity. To correct this misconception, the website needed to provide compelling answers to a simple question: What is the College of Arts and Humanities? With 14 unique departments (and numerous centers, institutes, and galleries) all housed under one roof, answering this question became complex. How could the new site communicate the shared goal of exposing people to new and innovative ways of thinking about the human experience?

The Solution

Informed by audience and stakeholder interviews and an in-depth website scan, the redesigned website highlights the College of Arts and Humanities’ vital role in education, research, and advocacy. The new design offers the flexibility to feature student, faculty, and alumni achievements through engaging homepage interactivity and microinteractions, while additional content allows for easy exploration and provides a vibrant space to celebrate the work of the College. Accessible, mobile-first design and content structure aimed at triaging audience needs ensures a positive and on-brand experience for all users.

Improving community resiliency to disasters.

A scientist standing in a stream measures water depth for a study

COPEWELL

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COPEWELL

Home Work COPEWELL

The Challenge

The Composite of Post Event Well-Being (COPEWELL) project — part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health Preparedness — uses an evidenced-based approach to help communities improve their resilience to disasters. For the project to be successful, complex data had to be presented in an accessible format to a broad audience with varied expertise.

Strategy

When you’re tasked with a data visualization project, it’s tempting to go the bells and whistles route and produce a complicated, impressive looking, but ultimately useless tool. Instead, the idfive team focused on function. In researching our primary audience — government agencies and departments at the township, city, or county level — it was clear that the majority of end-users would not have a background in disaster research or system dynamics. So, even though we were dealing exclusively with data, we had to make the raw numbers secondary to what those numbers meant.

Whenever possible, we provided context, anticipated questions, and connected results with actionable next steps. For example: A low value for this measure means that [name of county] is scoring in the bottom third with regards to Recovery compared to other census areas. Efforts should be made to strengthen this value.

To ensure that the tool met the needs of both the primary audience (local government agencies) and secondary audiences (federal government agencies and NGOs), data was presented by county and state as well as nationally.

It was equally important to describe and label the data so that it was easily understandable, including definitions where appropriate.

Complex data sets were presented in clear categories — model inputs and model outputs — with domains and definitions supplied for each category.

See Tool in Action

43

Validated measures in COPEWELL’s modeling tool

I loved getting in the weeds of how this tool worked, particularly on something where the potential impact is so significant. The interactivity is the ‘wow’ factor, helping policymakers make decisions to improve our lives.

Andrew White

DIRECTOR OF UX AND INFORMATION DESIGN

UX Design

Whenever there is data, there is a tremendous opportunity to tell a data story. We worked closely with our client to intimately understand every facet of the data so that we could engineer a data-powered interactive storytelling telling platform. In the end, we gave users the ability to author their own macro and micro story through discovery. The final expression is a user-centric tool that can be interrogated in multiple formats, including visualized and structured data.

Development

The idfive development team wrote a data processing application that does a minimum of 496,436 calculations ahead of time, so those values aren’t calculated every time a new user loads the page. The application then assigns the proper color value to every data point inside of every census area.

The Result

An accessible tool puts the power of data into the hands of community leaders and policymakers to improve community functioning and resilience to disasters.

Unifying the news hub of a flagship HBCU.

Howard University “The Dig”

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Howard University “The Dig”

Home Work Howard University “The Dig”

The Challenge

Howard University’s Office of University Communications (OUC) manages an extensive portfolio of print and web properties, including the University’s main site, Newsroom, and Howard Magazine.

With its Newsroom, Calendar, and Howard Magazine websites in Drupal 7, scheduled for an end-of-life in November 2022, the OUC had an opportunity to create a new platform to meet its long-term communications needs.

50

Number of Howard web properties that receive distributed content from The Dig.

"Helping Howard showcase their excellence, community, and vision through this redesign was intensely rewarding. We were committed to re-imagining multiple aspects of their news hub: how stories are discovered, the themes guiding those stories, and the visual language."

Pat Balasavage

SR. USER EXPERIENCE AND INTERFACE DESIGNER

The Strategy

A project with an overarching goal this ambitious—to create a communications centerpiece that would speak to the internal and external audiences of one of the country’s leading historically Black Colleges and Universities—needed to start with extensive research. Our work began with a thorough Discovery process, including remote workshops with members of the Howard communications team that helped uncover internal editorial governance gaps and define the overall spirit of the project. From that collaboration, three themes emerged as central to the Howard story: Research, Community, Philanthropy.

The site also needed to highlight the achievements of Howard’s students, faculty, staff, and alumni, as well as celebrate the “change makers”—those in the Howard community who actively commit to positive social change. With themes and imperatives agreed upon, the idfive team developed an information architecture and wireframes with taxonomy terms to represent the best of Howard University. The taxonomies enabled the Howard team to implement a more effective Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE) strategy across the institution’s major communications platforms.

UX Design

During user research, we discovered the need to balance the traditional brand look, but address the Howard team’s appetite for boldness and pushing the brand. While the site keeps the recognizable Howard blue, we made sure to use well-placed accents and white space to create areas of color and contrast. Angled elements and a variety of layouts were incorporated throughout the site to “break out of the box,” countering the grid-heavy structure of many news publications. We also emphasized high-quality photography, especially when featuring faces of the Howard community.

The final design leaves site visitors feeling:

Educated, as a reliable source of information with a unique perspective.
Uplifted, with a sense of success and progress.
Trust, that Howard is a worthwhile investment.
Pride, in the tapestry of the Black community.

And how users feel is central to our “neurodesign ux” practice.

Development

idfive developers took extra care to make sure the user experience came to life through hover effects and subtle animations, which help increase the feel of interactivity sitewide. The team also developed a wide variety of hero treatments to keep the different pages fresh, enhance engagement, and drive action.

The Result

The Dig has become the “single source of truth” for Howard University, with relevant content that can be easily shared across platforms.

There’s more where that came from. Explore our website, meet our team, and learn about idfive.

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