THE EARTH SCHOOL
A public school website redesign
Refreshing a public elementary school platform to reflect its mission, culture, and evolving community.
Who is The Earth School?
The Earth School is a public elementary school in New York City. Established in 1992, they have been on a mission to create a nurturing place to stimulate learning in all realms of child development: intellectual, social, emotional, and physical.
The current website is antiquated, and the School needs help with updating the website to reflect its mission and evolving community. Their vision is to showcase its thriving community of over 250 children and the dedicated teaching staff, and also celebrate the parent-teacher partnership they cherish.
Project type
Contract work
Three months
My roles
UX/ UI Designer
Project Manager
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Tools
Figma
FigJam
Otter
Maze
CHALLENGE
How might we optimize the digital experience while providing relevant resources for prospective parents to get to know The Earth School and its admission process better?
Problem
The current website is outdated – It has a poor organizational structure and navigation, antiquated context, and visual hierachy – that doesn’t support the school’s goals of targeting parents.
Goal
Create an identity refresh and implement website redesign into the limitations of Google Sites that will help prospective parents engage and utilize the site most efficiently.
DEFINE + IDEATE
Making it easier to explore content
Our target audience was prospective parents. To ensure they were getting the relevant content, such as understanding the school culture, admission process, program offerings, etc, I focused on incorporating these main areas:
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Landing page with discoverable and relevant content
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Make the admission process more engaging to explore
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Clear and concise about us and mission statement
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Call to Action, such as Contact Us, Donate, and School Tour
Simplified Navigation
Focus was on ensuring prospective parents could access the relevant content they needed quickly in the navigation and also grouping all resources under one navigation dropdown.
A more intuitive flow
Previously, it wasn’t easy to explore topics and often required a lot of clicks to return back to the main category page. The flow redesign focuses on precise categorization and accessible content all in one place.
PROTOTYPE
Key solutions
01. How might we assist prospective parents to navigate content more easily?
Content Organization
Giving users the freedom and flexibility to find information through tested and proven categorizations and explore topics with improved visual hierarchy.
Mega Menu Navigation
Creating a global menu navigation was essential for prospective parents to quickly access specific resources without having to excessively use the backspace or lose their place on the site.
Breadcrumbs and Anchor Links
Given the large amount of content, breadcrumbs provided a secondary means of navigating through resources quickly and reducing use of back button.
Anchor links were used to allow users to “Jump to a relevant topic” to get to their desired information in a matter of seconds.
02. How might we help prospective parents discover more about what The Earth School offers and the content more intuitively?
Optimized Homepage
The landing page now showcases the most relevant content with engaging imagery. It provides concise headlines and discoverable content about the school’s core values, physical spaces, upcoming events, parent testimonials, and school tour booking support.
Clear and Concise Mission
A dedicated About Us page for users to learn more about the school’s mission and values, along with bios of the teachers and staff who are the heart of this community.
Anticipate user needs with supporting resources and call-to-actions
A dedicated FAQ page, school tour booking page, and contact us button allow users to find the information they care about the most quickly.
NEXT STEPS
Coming up
We’re currently in the process of implementing the website into Google Sites and organizing the visual identity system. We will then be able to utilize Google Analytics to measure website performance.
Check back in a few weeks for updated progress!
@ Peggy Lu 2023