Ashoka University: Content Management System + UX Design
Ashoka University is a pioneer in its focus on providing a liberal education at par with the best in the world, in India. The aim of the university is to help students become well-rounded individuals who can think critically about issues from multiple perspectives, communicate effectively and become leaders with a commitment to public service.
At Ashoka University, I was deeply involved in designing the global brand strategy, social media strategy and ui/ux of the Ashoka University CMS along with my team lead, Mr. Ujjal Dey.
The Objective of the Project
Being a new University with immense potential to be a leading University in Liberal Arts- Ashoka’s website had to be designed in a way that every course (eg: Literature, Computer Science etc) and every Centre (example Genpact Centre for Women’s leadership or Centre for Entrepreneurship) had an identity of its own, and autonomy over its content, and yet be a part of the whole brand.
Therefore, the UX had to be designed in a way that a student was able to understand what all she can choose to do at the school and the faculty and staff found it easy to keep their webpages updated & their students & prospective students engaged.
Sneak peek into the product history
The Challenge
Liberal Arts University is something very new in India and it was quite challenging to explain digitally the integrated yet distinct coursework the programme posited.
The Solution
We worked the hardest in making the header menu the most distinct and literally the backbone of the whole user experience.
1. Header Menu Hover:
While the user hovers over one menu option, the dropdown opens up to explain sub-heads with one line each, explaining right away what that course-area is all about, and how it fits in the whole undergrad degree.
2. Sub-heads hover:
Hovering onto the subheads themselves, open third level of menus with their respective brief descriptions. The idea was to have the least number of clicks before a user understands and realises which page she wants to see in greater detail. (please see images above to understand more)
3. Consistent header across micro-sites:
We have two main designs- homepages and single pages. Since we had a number of centres, who kept growing and increasing, we created a template for these micro-sites, so that it was easy for the webmaster to create microsites as and when needed.
Both microsite as well as internal pages, had a consistent header menu- which was the key tool in helping users understand and navigate through the website and the courses/curriculum.
5. Decentralised Back-end:
We designed the backend tags and category based.
The idea was to decentralise who all can access and edit their space on the CMS and hence, authorisations to edit were linked to the google auth of the university email id.
The webmaster, can therefore, give and revoke access as per need, so that faculty and staff can directly edit- though one layer of check goes through the webmaster.
