University of Southern Maine Undertakes Re-Design with New Information Architecture by Dynamic Diagrams

By Lisa Agustin

How do you organize a collection of over one hundred, decentrally-managed micro-sites into a single, cohesive entity that offers a consistent user experience from the home page down to the lowest level? This was the key issue facing the University of Southern Maine‘s site redesign, and Dynamic Diagrams was happy to help. The university had plans to migrate the site to a new content management system, and recognized the importance of creating a new architecture to provide both a better experience for site visitors as well as a standardized approach to organizing content for micro-site owners.

After completing a rigorous research and analysis phase that included stakeholder interviews, an inventory of over 5,000 pages (you may have seen the earlier Post-It Note output here), user focus groups, and an online survey, we created a new information architecture (see above) and a set of core wireframes (page schematics) to illustrate the new high-level and page-level user experience, respectively. The new architecture puts the user’s needs front-and-center by presenting all related information together (e.g., degree information that was previously scattered across the course catalog, academic department, and university system database), rather than forcing users to navigate multiple silos of information. The architecture and wireframes will guide the development of the site’s new look and feel, which is now in progress. Look for the new design to be launched later this year.