Reimagining the Student Experience
What came back was clear: prospective students had to be the primary focus.
Not because other audiences didn't matter,
but because designing for the person with the least context currently meant the site would work better for everyone else too.
The 17-year-old choosing an undergrad major
Thinking: Is this place serious enough to matter, and human enough to enjoy?
Will I get access to real opportunities and and will I actually have a life while I'm here?
The 22-year-olds and above weighing a master's or PhD
Looking for Credibility and Institutional weight. Access to research funding that justify the years they're about to commit.
I interviewed stakeholders to understand priorities, to find the one audience priority that could make every subsequent decision defensible.
I studied competitor department websites across North America to understand what the bar looked like and where ECE had room to differentiate.
I had informal conversations with students and faculty to understand what they were actually looking for versus what the site was currently giving them.
01 Transforming the homepage into a discovery engine.
I restructured the Homepage from the ground up into independent modular sections, each optimized for a first-time visitor.
The goal was a page that pointed clearly inward, to internal pages that were actually of value to the visitors.
My design focused on making it be perceived as open, active, and easy to engage with, instead of users having to hunt through disconnected sections.
The ECE Website's Homepage had to perform well as a daily destination —
the redesign expands its role into a gateway for the entire ECE ecosystem.
02 Content for Multiple Audiences versus for One.
I had to make decisions that served both audiences without the site feeling split or generic.
For eg, The Industry Opportunities page was built for industry partners.
This was an original page for the website - targeting Industry Partners asking them to either "Work with us" and/or "Sponsor us,"
showcasing departmental metrics and opportunities for sponsorship.
But I designed it knowing a prospective student would read it and know that the department gets them access to the organizations they want to work at.
Built an original page for Industry Partners because the Department was active in the industry but didn't reflect it on the website.
03 Transformed a plugin-generated page through a progressive disclosure.
ECE had an events page, which instead of introducing its event offerings, was originally a standalone calendar and list plugin.
I transformed it into a structured Events page with event showcases, contextual information, and an embedded events widget, improving discoverability.
Instead of presenting events as a simple list, each event is surfaced as part of slider with category cards that let students quickly understand
the breadth of ECE's events and identify those aligned with their interests, with the full calendar and list view accessible through the embedded widget.
The experience thereby shifts from finding a event to discovering a like-minded community.
ECE's plugin generated Events page
ECE's events page now
Built an original page, taking an auto-generated WordPress calendar widget page into a proper page with branding and contextual information,
later integrated into the homepage through a widget.
04 Bringing erstwhile properties back with brand-consistent, repeatable UI patterns.
I was tasked with conducting research and auditing a research lab's standalone website to understand how to improve the user experience on the site
and to propose a design-focused solution to integrate the TNFC lab into ECE's digital environment.
Originally only asked to perform ux-enhancements, further inquiries revealed that the department had a few properties that existed on standalone digital environments.
In consultation with the administrators of those properties and the department's in-house marketing team,
it was clear that bringing them back into the fold would be greater than just making UX-enhancements.
After my contract concluded, the same patterns and components were reused to build the Grid Modernization Centre's content hub on the ECE website.
Toronto NanoFabrication Centre
Shipped · Feb 2025
Despite being located inside the ECE department, TNFC labs had its own infrastructure, and no connection to ECE's brand or navigation.
I consolidated this multi-page site into a two-page section native to ECE's digital environment.
05 Responsive by design.
Whether accessed from a phone between classes or a desktop for research, the experience remains consistent across devices.
Responsive layouts, flexible components, and adaptive content ensure the same intuitive navigation and visual hierarchy across phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop.
This approach transforms a website into an ongoing information guide — faster, clearer, and more valuable for both people and the educational institution —
while respecting the trust users place in their university during some of the most important moments of their lives.
06 Page Builds to Enhance the Experience.
A website comprises many different page types, each with its own content and user needs.
Some required tailored UX enhancements — not to radically reinvent them, but to better emphasize information while consistently applying established university-wide design standards.
Similar to the Events page, the department's news articles existed only as individual WordPress-generated posts, with no dedicated repository or landing page for users to browse and discover content.
Meanwhile, the department's researchers needed to display student opportunities, but the existing Research at ECE page wasn't designed to accommodate any type of job board.
Student Research Opportunities
Shipped · Dec 2024
A student-focused sub-page built under the Research page. Research access is a deciding factor for graduate applicants, and students needed to know they had these opportunities.
ECE Latest: News & Insights
Shipped · Dec 2024
A news and blog content hub, giving the department a content channel it could use as ongoing proof of departmental activity.
