NSU Broward Center of Innovation
The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation is a public-private partnership between Nova Southeastern University and Broward County acting as an economic and education development engine linking the South Florida innovation ecosystem.
My Role
Research, Profiling, Wireframes, Prototyping, Low Fidelity Design, High Fidelity Design.
What I did
- Page card sorting
- Content and image layout planning
- Wireframing
- Final template designs
- Page template specifications
Project Goals
The NSU Broward Center of Innovation was a new addition to the NSU Davie Campus and is located in the same building as the NSU library. The new center was designed to use the latest state-of-the-art technology available to campus staff, students, and outside media outlets. Since this was a partnership between the center and NSU, the website identity had to incorporate the two different branding styles. To help with the development cost, the site was created using the same nova.edu CMS system. The existing nova.edu top navigation and expanded side menu used in the new site to further keep the development cost down. A custom pallet leverage off the nova.edu site was incorporated to help show a tie between the two different websites.
Website Page Mapping
The project timeline was broken down into several phases for a total completion time of 8 weeks. A card sorting exercise was conducted to decide how the center services would be arranged into separate web pages.
Section Navigation
The navigation used for the site was a simple dropdown menu, leveraged from the nova.edu legacy style template.
Website Layouts - Low Res
Collaborating with the marketing writers, low-resolution templates were created to outline where the final text copy and images would be placed on various pages. The low-resolution templates were then posted online to be reviewed by both the marketing department and the Levan center members.
Final Website Design
After the online review of the low-res templates was completed, final templates were created incorporating the new site colors and branding guidelines. The templates were populated with a final page copy and images. The top banner used for each page was designed to look different from the traditional banner used on the main nova.edu website. The top banner images needed to look modern and hi-tech. Unlike the original nsu.edu web pages, background watermark images were inserted into numerous colored backgrounds, used throughout the site.
Final Website Layouts
Below are the final Levan Center hi-resolution templates. The pages also leverage the top and bottom nova navigation and colors.
Conclusion
After the final review was completed for the templates, the client expressed they were quite happy with the finished product. After the website's launch, statistics showed first-time visits were made from an audience mostly of students and various department faculty. It was important for the website to show all the different types of services offered. This was especially important since they offered paid services covering room rentals, auditorium rentals, equipment rentals, and memberships.