Office of Higher Ed
MN Office of Higher Education
The Minnesota Office of Higher Education (“OHE”) is charged with serving millions of individuals and families statewide, connecting students to financial aid programs and resources needed to make college possible for every Minnesotan.
While the department had a lot of useful information and helpful resources, it was buried beneath a confusing navigation and poor user experience. The design was dated and inaccessible, and the site itself ran on legacy software that was difficult for editors to manage and update.
OHE needed an experienced partner who could help lead a full redesign and rebuild of their flagship site, and provide inspiration for a more engaging online experience.
Improved UX
We began our engagement with an extensive review of the current site navigation, and how it was serving (or not serving) the target audience and department goals.
Through user testing, we were able to refine and adjust our recommendations prior to finalizing a much simpler and easy-to-understand approach.
Design Refresh
Building upon state branding guidelines, we introduced a new, more modern look and feel to the website that emphasized greater warmth and human interaction, while providing a calming layout to contrast the content-heavy needs of the client.
As we neared launch, we again conducted usability testing with volunteers, making additional recommendations and adjustments to the design and layout where needed to improve user experience.
Technical Improvements
From a technical standpoint, our team led the client through technical discovery, identifying the technical and editorial requirements of the client, and how to migrate all of their existing content out of a dated (Cold Fusion) content management system.
OHE had an internal developer they wished to take over ongoing site maintenance for the new site, and our team was able to train them on best practices and developer operations along the way.
The new website greatly improved both the accessibility and performance scores over the previous site, while empowering OHE’s editorial team with a powerful new content management system and tools for managing content effectively.
Electric Citizen continues to partner with OHE post-launch, offering ongoing site support, maintenance and strategic consulting.
