Higher Education
NewCity is an internationally recognized leader in online strategy, design and development for higher education.
Colleges and universities face many similar challenges, and on the surface it appears that they serve the same basic audiences. But there's no cookie-cutter solution to solving these challenges. Even though we've been providing higher ed strategy and web design for years, we never rest on what we already know. In 2006 NewCity was the first firm to apply Indi Young’s mental model research process to the redesign of a university website, leading to a big leap forward in user-centered design for higher ed sites. Since then we’ve continued to innovate in higher ed, always with a goal to better understand your unique story, your particular audiences, and what success ultimately looks like for your institution.
Anyone who works in higher education knows it's a whole different ballgame from a corporate environment. Nothing gets done without a committee. You have to wrangle dozens if not hundreds of independently managed websites under your school's brand.
And yet nowhere is the total brand experience more important for attracting the best students, growing enrollment, increasing alumni engagement and promoting research.
Approximately half of NewCity's work is in higher education. Our work in other industries brings a continual stream of inspiration back to our higher ed strategy.
Roanoke College - New Mobile Site
Roanoke College lauched it's mobile site today, designed by NewCity. You can read more about it at www.rcnewsblog.com/?p=933 or check out the site at i.roanoke.edu.
In The Clouds
Why Virtualization?
The last several years have seen a move towards the buzzword compliant world of cloud computing. Cloud computing is a somewhat nebulous term that has been used to describe all kinds of web-based services, from mail to storage to hosting.
At NewCity, one of the ways we're leveraging the cloud is by using the services of…
How branding can change the core experience of a college
Ted Long, president of Elizabethtown College, and Tim Westerbeck, principal of Lipman Hearne, presented a case study on the rebranding of Elizabethtown College at the AMA Symposium for Higher Education this week. President Long's leadership, Lipman Hearne's insight, and the College's courage led them to a transformation that has impacted not only how Elizabethtown thinks and talks about itself, but the experience they deliver. I was excited to see this example of experience design in action.
…Takeaways from David’s EdUI Presentation on Twitter
Read takeaway tweets from David's "Beyond Blah Blah" workshop at EdUI this past Monday.
Workshop: “Beyond Blah Blah” at EdUI
David Poteet will be teaching the full-day version of Beyond Blah Blah: Creating Great Content for the Web at EdUI on September 21st. In this workshop we take lessons we've learned and the best tips from our favorite experts to teach you how to:
- Figure out what content people want in the first place. Learn how to use Mental Models, KJ sessions, Carewords surveys, search logs and more to uncover top audience goals, then organize and prioritize your content.
- Use words that smell like…
Workshop: Web Design Without Politics
I gave a presentation at Eduweb in Chicago in July 2009 titled "Web Design Without Politics." I showed 6 techniques we've learned or developed to help a group of people from across an institution plan their website together in a short period of time. And not fight about it later.
I'll be teaching it again in September at EdUI in Charlottesville, VA.
Examples from our Portfolio
Results that speak.
I think the most important thing that I didn't realize starting our work with NewCity was that we were gaining a partner. NewCity's approach is total collaboration to produce the best quality work. It was very important for us to be included in every step of the work - to make sure the process was also a learning experience for our team. Boy, we've learned a lot! And we thank you!
- Monika Brady, Web Services Manager, Northwestern Health Sciences University
