The University of San Diego is a nationally ranked private Catholic institution, committed to providing a liberal and diverse education to over 7,000 students and offering over 60 bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees. The University is also committed to providing a positive online experience to their varied audiences of students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, parents and community partners. We have worked closely with USD over the past four years to create an online presence that is sharp, fresh, and relevant for all users.

Challenge.

The most significant challenge was maintaining the united brand of USD while designing a unique feel for each College, School or Department. Since our primary role was user experience rather than web development, we kept a close eye on the core structure and code efficiency necessary to execute the user interface designs.

Solution.

We approached every College, School or Department website as an individual project with individual needs and a unique audience. Each project was initiated with extensive research, interviews and surveys in order to create intelligent information architecture. We created a specific look and feel for each client within the University and produced website designs appropriate to the subject, but always made sure that they connected with the university brand. We often performed usability tests and maintained user advisory groups to ensure that we were effectively reaching the audiences of each website. We produced detailed visual style guides for the technical team at USD so they could build, populate and maintain the websites themselves with the same structural and design integrity.

Result.

Our initial project with USD, the interactive campus map, led to a trusted partnership with USD and sotodesign, a design and brand identity agency, and formed CoLab – Interactive for edu. Over the past four years, we have designed the primary sandiego.edu home page and administrative web presence, along with websites for the School of Business, College of Arts & Sciences, School of Law, School of Leadership and Educational Sciences, Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, Undergraduate and Graduate Admissions, Torero Life and Hospitality Services.

“FreshForm understands how to carefully listen to the diverse needs and interests of our organization, and translate those ideas and concepts into highly effective and creative web designs.”
—Christopher W. Wessells, Vice Provost and CIO,
University of San Diego

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www.sandiego.edu

Services.
Digital Strategy, Interactive Design, Online Marketing, Web Development

Technologies.
xHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash