University of Maryland School of Public Health
Made at idfive
UI Design / Web Design / Prototyping
challenge
Through research, community engagement, and mentorship from faculty who are leaders in their field, the University of Maryland School of Public Health (UMD SPH) provides their students with the support they need to build a career in public health and make a difference in the world. Our goal was to position UMD SPH as the standard for 21st century Public Health schools and initiatives by building them a more robust, organized and modernized website that demonstrated their impact at the local, state, regional and national levels. We worked to develop an online experience that would attract prospective students through emphasizing the unique undergraduate opportunities UMD SPH offers, and place its programs and research center more central in the website's architecture.
My role
Tasked with finding a means to both uniquely distinguish UMD SPH web presence while also adhering to an established University of Maryland Drupal 8 template presented an interesting challenge. My approach was to produce custom widgets that would tweak the styling and break away from the purely "box and modular" treatments of other UMD family sites. I created visually compelling pages with a diverse component library so that the future expansion of programs can be accommodated. One focus point for the design touched on stories, events, videos, and imagery that demonstrates UMD SPH’s commitment to advancing the field of public health and making a positive impact on the world; providing a more authentic presence. Visually this meant playing up UMD yellow to highlight areas of focus, as well as creating a spacial sense of depth through the layering of elements.
the result
The new site’s design allowed for information to be more consolidated, the site was more streamlined and easy to use, and the updated pages clearly demonstrate the impact UMD SPH has on it’s surrounding communities. Most importantly, the website felt part of the UMD family, but with its own personal spin that confidently spoke to a diverse and ambitious community that makes up UMD SPH.