The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) is made up of 5 schools, 8 Research Centres and contributes to 5 cross-faculty research centres. The FASS team were looking for a website that engaged their different audience groups, allowed faculty staff to easily update the site with their own content and made it easy for staff to respond to website enquiries.
About UNSW FASS
With many different staff members responsible for keeping the Faculty website up to date about news from the various schools and research centres, UNSW FASS wanted to provide their team with an easy to use content management system that encouraged them to keep the website up to date. This included having a website that the faculty staff was proud of showing off and invested in maintaining it with the latest content.
The Faculty staff, working in 5 schools and 8 research centres are all extremely passionate about their respective fields of work and how they are represented on the web. All the staff were extremely keen to provide input towards the design and ensuring that the unique and complex natures of their individual units.
The Challenge
The challenge presented to Fatpublisher was primarily in ensuring that the many stakeholders in the Faculty had the opportunity to contribute their ideas and preferences to the design and information heirarchy of the website. The website itself had to meet the demands for ease of use in updating for the many contributors who had the responsibility of website added to their busy workload.
The balance of stakeholder needs and the target audience needs had to be synchronised such that the user experience of several audience groups were satisfied with quick access to relevant and helpful information about studying at UNSW FASS, contacting faculty staff, showcases of research work and key course dates. Identifying these core audience groups and their needs for the Faculty website was balanced with what they might also get from the University wide website and and the difference in the way the Faculty would meet these needs.
The Solution
The Fatpublisher Site Manager™ for managing content provided a perfect solution for UNSW FASS where varying access rights are assigned and managed and multiple users are updating content in different parts of the site on a daily basis.
A detailed process of information architecture was undertaken to ensure all requirements of the different stakeholder groups were identified. Across the different schools and research centres a consistent structure was identified and a design and flexibility built into this structure for each school and research centre to express their own unique brand and personality on their own pages. Between the contemporary design, the consultative process and the easy-to use content management system, website administrators on the various units took to updating content and preparing the site for launch with much enthusiasm.
The Results
One of the success stories of the UNSW FASS website has been the rate of enquiry and information pack requests prior to Universities admission deadlines. The faculty reported a 75% increase in the enquiry rate from the same time in the previous year before the new website went live. The result is a testament to the attractive website and the ease of use for a key target audience group around the time when potential students are making decisions about which university to attend.
