Shining a Light on Opportunity and Excellence
California Community College Chancellors Office Website
Community colleges are a critical part of our society’s education system and are filled with diverse people of all ages. With over 1.8 million students attending 116 colleges, California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office (CCCCO) needs to give future students easy access to the information they need to make the best decisions when picking the right school for them. Metajive partnered with CCCCO and RSE to create a website that would help put people on the path to achieving educational success.
Challenge
Anytime you combine multiple websites, you will face a challenge or two. This project was no exception, as it meant us combining multiple campaign websites into a single source. We started by earning the trust of stakeholders by listening, then strategically guiding the entire team through a process that helped us prioritize content and consolidate vital functionality for students. We moved to designing a structure that would allow potential students to follow their passions by identifying the right opportunity at a California Community College, with eyes on their future careers.
Visual Evolution
We defined a signature style for CCCCO as we merged their three websites. In doing so, we established a unified type system, emphasized their expanded color palette, and curated photography that celebrated the diversity of community college students.
Strategy
Make. It. Simple. We simplified the path for potential students to find their local school and the program that’s right for them while focusing on making it easy for them to apply to schools and navigate the financial aid process. Most importantly, we helped potential students understand how their program can lead to an advanced degree or the career of their dreams.
Design
This effort required both advanced UX and UI design. We established a design system that felt bold and contemporary. One that would use photography, videos, and other content to appeal to the diverse student population. We used CCCCO’s vibrant color palette, as well as their typographic system to establish the visual style of the site.
The UX design allows for users to not only discover what’s possible at their local school, but to get a deeper understanding of degree programs as well as transfer opportunities. In doing so, our UX design spoke to a number of different user journeys for different personas.
Details We Love
Typography
Color
Modular System
Technology
When it comes to technology, we love to get our teeth into more complex sites. Being a transfer tool, this one definitely pushed our team further than a conventional website, and we were thrilled with how it all came together. First, we used multiple APIs to pull all available courses into our system. Then, we used a mapping algorithm to determine all possible transfer destinations. Comprehensive Search makes it easier to find the right resources quickly.
The transfer tool allows users to find their pathway through multiple avenues:
- Based on the community college
- Based on the transfer destination
- Based on the degree program
And for the nuts and bolts, we used Statamic CMS, Laravel PHP for our web framework, Tailwind as a utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces, and VueJS to build web interfaces and one-age applications applied on both desktop and mobile.
Project Results
This project resulted in feedback that makes our work truly feel worthwhile. We were told that students felt seen, respected, and heard. Information that is critical to a student’s educational journey is now easily accessible and is all located in one place. Our ongoing relationship with CCCCO ensures the site continues to improve, with ever increasing accessibility and a focus on improving KPIs. We’re proud to be able to contribute to improving the lives of California’s future students and our underserved populations.
One More Thing
RELATED PROJECTS
Website, App, Ecommerce, CRM
Website
