Rasmussen School of Nursing landing page redesign
Project: Rasmussen University was in the process of a branding refresh. With its popularity of enrollment, the school of nursing was the first-degree program to take on the new look and feel in the form of pay-per-click (PPC) landing pages. Each nursing degree program needed to work collectively while underneath the Rasmussen umbrella. As part of the objectives, the brand refresh called for a more contemporary look to keep up with the ever-evolving continuing education landscape. Other objectives also included making sure the user interface was intuitive, easy to use, and appealed to a diverse audience of prospective students.
My role in this project
During the duration of this project, I had several major roles. This included the following:
Design Execution and Direction
I helped lead design direction for the Rasmussen School of Nursing landing pages that would later serve as guidance during the school's brand redesign.
Project Scope and Definition
I worked closely and collaboratively with key stakeholders of the account team and content strategy team in defining creative deliverables during the project timeline.
The solution:
The challenge developing a new look for a historical brand
At the start of this project, Rasmussen University (formally Rasmussen College) was in the process of going through a complete brand refresh. This included the design direction and development of the School of Nursing PPC landing pages. These pages were chosen base on the popularity of the School of Nursing and its degree offerings. Knowing this information presented the team with an opportunity to target a larger user pool for user testing during the refinement process of the website prototype.
While working in collaboration with other stakeholders, I started by looking at previous analytics and insight information of prospective nursing students in the marketing funnel. These were prospects in the awareness stage. I wanted to understand what was working and what was not working for them in order to become a nurtured lead. In order to do this, I worked closely with many of the business owners and the client to better understand what intrigued their current continuing education students to apply. One thing I learned was that prospects wanted more quick-hitting statistical information that was easily digestible about the degree programs. Once this was validated, I turned my attention to the design direction of both mobile and desktop. This included what would later become a key branding element and theme for this project – angled geometric shapes.
The following work below is a brief example of what was created for this project and my thought process for it.
Angled geometry
To make the design experience more memorable, I used angled geometric shapes as a branding element. This allowed users and consumers to create a subconscious connection to the brand and identify with the new look.
Desktop website callouts
Using statistical callouts throughout the website as part of the interface design allowed users to obtain quick, easy, and relative information about the degree program. This showed in user testing a significant lift in user engagement and time spent on the website. By using both data and design, I was able to enhance the user experience for a better consumer product.
Mobile website screens
With a high rate of user engagement on mobile devices, taking a mobile-first approach ensured that the user experience would be easy to use and navigate. Making sure that user-interface elements were also flexible in a web responsive environment ensures that content could be easier replicated using atomic design principles.
Typography
Typefaces can act as a key design element that allows consumers to identify with a brand. By choosing a font that would exemplify a professional look can also help the interface design. For these reasons, I choose Kalula for its flexibility, legibility, and contemporary design to compliment the over user experience.
Iconograph system
The icon system was designed to be an extension of the brand refresh look and feel. Each on was creating using Adobe Illustrator. As part of this, I chose to tie in the angled geometric color overlay look. By going with a custom icon system helped identify content sections and enhanced the user-interface design.
