Nuts &
Bolts
Timeline
February 2019 – July 2020
Project Scope
- Project discovery and analytics analysis
- Information architecture and navigation strategy
- Pattern library development
- CMS integration and help with content entry
CMS
Drupal
Site Size
1,500 pages
An award-winning site serving those who help people in need.
Approximately one-fourth of osteopathic physicians provide care in small communities and rural areas.
A big focus of VCOM’s programs is increasing access to services like preventive and prenatal care, through free clinics and other in-community formats — to better reach the people are most in need. Their doctors learn skills like cultural awareness, delivering care after natural disasters, and how to deal with obstacles like language barriers during treatment.
In support of their community-outreach approach, their campuses are located in college towns with rural outlying areas in Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana. They came to us for a design and CMS update, but also for help untangling what their four-campus physical reality had done to their digital information architecture.
Our UX and content strategy focus was to streamline the user experience by combing out all the duplicate content and separating academic and admissions information — which was the same for all locations — from the situational details unique to each, like extracurricular clubs, campus gym memberships, faculty, and research opportunities.
The redesigned website does a much better job of showing off the differences between campuses, as well as the school’s overall mission-driven character.
The new website won silver at the 2020 Summit Awards for the Blue Ridge chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
Creating a Sense of Place
The addition of a fourth campus exacerbated the need to differentiate VCOM’s locations, to help prospective students through the application process, but also to give the institution a more authentic brand presence online.
Intentional use of learning and research spaces in photo choices — showing students and faculty in their work — helped bring the school’s personality and the student experience to life.
