Sketchin

The digital ecosystem for professional university education

SUPSI has strengthened its role as an institution of excellence for professional university education with a new digital strategy offering tools and channels dedicated to each category of the university's users, with the aim of communicating more effectively with its numerous internal and external stakeholders, enhancing its activities and its contribution to the development of the region.

SUPSI has strengthened its role as an institution of excellence for professional university education with a new digital strategy offering tools and channels dedicated to each category of the university's users, with the aim of communicating more effectively with its numerous internal and external stakeholders, enhancing its activities and its contribution to the development of the region.

Industry

Education

Year

2022

Client

SUPSI - University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland

An extension of the SUPSI experience

The traditional educational experience of those who are immersed in university life daily is amplified and enriched through digital channels and touchpoints designed in close collaboration with the SUPSI team who, following a number of meetings, has explored, understood and translated people’s needs into tools.

Outcome

SUPSI now provides a consistent and contemporary digital experience on four different digital touchpoints, in addition to the already existing internal employee portal: institutional website, researcher portal, student internal portal and institutional newsletter. User research has allowed for the identification of design pillars to offer a meaningful experience to all the identified profiles.

Furthermore, we have assisted SUPSI in developing an internal process of analysis, troubleshooting and solution generation which ensures effectiveness and quality in anticipation of future interventions.

touchpoints designed
4
stakeholders involved
50+
user profiles identified
5

Different needs, one experience

SUPSI embodies multiple facets which cater to various needs. It isn’t just a place dedicated to education and learning, but also a hub for innovation and research, a platform for scientific dissemination and a network of individuals sharing several needs.

The challenge was ensuring a consistent brand identity and experience across portals and tools dedicated to people with very different goals.

  • The student internal portal: dedicated to all Bachelor's and Master's students, containing all the information they need during their training.
  • The researcher portal: a space for scientific personnel to explore and publish papers and research projects, closely tied to their field.
  • The institutional portal: SUPSI’s digital showcase par excellence and this is why it needs to enable visitors to understand the institution, interact with it, and even aspire to be a part of it.
  • The newsletter: a design-to-code tool to stay constantly updated on the university’s latest developments.

Quality from the design idea to the final experience

Thanks to the continuous collaboration between designers, front-end and back-end developers, the envisioned experience, co-designed during the work sessions, was translated into the code without distortions.

In fact, a dedicated Quality Assurance process and path was structured that immediately involved the SUPSI work team, the development team and the design team to ensure maximum adherence and consistency at an experiential level, and above all efficiency and effectiveness with design-to-code solutions as well.

Consistent brand, always

The evolution of the brand identity enables SUPSI to establish connections with its stakeholders through a structured yet flexible and dynamic identity, recognizable across different contexts and touchpoints.

The adopted solutions enhance and make the SUPSI system immediately recognizable, effectively communicating its multifaceted offerings. The brand identity is adapted to all digital platforms, creating a strong and coherent ecosystem capable of representing all the diverse aspects of the university.

A Design System for an integrated ecosystem

In order to standardise the digital experience across SUPSI channels, a Design System has been created which establishes rules and guidelines that enable all parties involved in the development of digital channels to maintain visual consistency across all platforms, simplify and enhance user experiences and make efficient the creation of new digital products and the restyling of existing services.

For the release of the various portals, we relied on quality assurance sessions, user testing sessions and rapid prototyping to design all the potential solutions needed, particularly in terms of accessibility. Alongside the development phase managed internally at SUPSI, we conducted periodic quality assurance sessions to ensure alignment with the desired user experience.

Thanks to the study of the brand, values and institutional mandates, and most importantly, thanks to the input and insights provided by people who are part of the daily life at SUPSI, it became possible to enable the design of a highly distinctive and consistent experience across all the various tools and touchpoints provided.

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