A multi-site transition for the University of Illinois College of Medicine

A slide from discovery findings presentation, displaying a header stating "when it comes to the websites, you're both skeptical and hopeful" and 3 quotes from stakeholders

A slide from my discovery findings presentation.

UI College of Medicine came to Pixo looking to transition to a WordPress platform that our company had developed years prior. It may sound like an easy project, considering there was no design or development. However, this ended up being the biggest content strategy engagement Pixo had ever provided. Over the course of 2 years, I worked closely with their web team to build trust across a large group of stakeholders and launch a network of 25 websites.

More about the project

The College of Medicine is comprised of three campuses and dozens of educational departments. Not only did each campus have their own needs and audiences, but many of the academic departments had unique problems to solve as well. The Chicago campus in particular had several departments that had gone rogue and created websites outside the college system. 

My contributions

Discovery

Discovery tasks included:

  • Many interviews with internal stakeholders and audience members

  • Audience and messaging workshops

  • Content audits

  • Journey mapping

A 3x3 matrix with sticky notes in each square.

A prioritization matrix from the audience workshop.

I conducted two phases of discovery. The first phase was aimed at simply understanding the full scope of problems needing to be solved. I found that:

  • The sites were difficult to maintain with so much inaccuracy and redundancy for the small group of web team members to make a dent in.

  • There was a clear lack of equity among the three campuses that hindered the smaller locales.

  • Alignment in style and branding across the websites was lacking.

  • The site’s structure was difficult to navigate and the lack of taxonomy rendered site search ineffective.

“Consistency is key because residents don’t choose their campus”
— College stakeholder on equity

During the second phase of discovery, I was able to develop relationships and gather data and feedback to make recommendations for information architecture changes at both the system and site level and content governance for the entire organization. I also convinced the client to narrow their focus from 18 target audiences to 4 and empowered them to hire more web team members.

Information architecture

My research revealed two major IA problems in the network of College of Medicine websites. The first was that all of the sites were quite difficult to navigate and were department-oriented rather than user-oriented. Pages were not organized in a way that site visitors were expecting. The user experience was extremely frustrating. The second problem was that there was duplication of information across the system, and often the sites contradicted each other.

Referencing my robust research, I collaborated with the college web team to develop an IA that prioritized the needs of our core audiences (prospective students, prospective residents/fellows, prospective faculty/staff, and small gift donors). For example, rather than favoring content about strategic planning, we focused on program requirements and research accomplishments. I then got feedback from a large group of audience members via a tree jack test.

Results from a tree jack prompt to "find information about the MD curriculum for year 2," which depicts a strong preference for one pathway.

One of the results from a tree jack test.

Our new IA accounted for everything and assigned just one home for each piece of information. Previously, MD admissions info would be featured in a multitude of places. Now, it is in just one place and all other sites or pages simply point to that source of truth. We moved certain content off campus and department sites and housed them on the college site, and vice-versa. Two nice by-products of this decision included significantly reduced content and improved equity amongst the campus sites.

Content transition

Once we had a strong plan for how the websites should be set up and how they should fit together, it was time to transition the content. With a college site, 3 campus sites, and 21 specialized department sites, this was no small feat.

I developed a template that worked for most academic and clinical departments and tackled any outliers one by one. I created a style guide and trained stakeholders across the organization in writing for the web best practices, setting them up to succeed in the long term. I also created a QA plan for pre and post-launch.