College of Built Environments
WEBSITE DESIGN
OVERVIEW
An architecture and urban planning school of the University of Washington, the College of Built Environments (CBE) inhabits a space that intersects planning, design, materials, construction, real estate, landscapes, and social and environmental justice. CBE sought to refresh its website to engage prospective students and establish its own visual brand. This identity needed to reflect CBE’s distinctive design heritage while seamlessly aligning with the overarching university brand identity.
DETAILS
CBE engaged our agency for a full site redesign. Collaborating closely with the CBE marketing team and the Dean of the college, we crafted a clean and modern aesthetic while ensuring consistency with the parent UW brand. Through interactive focus groups with faculty, staff, and students, we garnered community input and enthusiasm for the refreshed look. The result improves usability and accessibility for all users.
BUILDING WITH PURPOSE
The design needed to be both efficient and sustainable, allowing CBE’s web, marketing, and communications teams to manage and maintain it independently. Visually, it had to reflect the UW brand while incorporating unique elements that represent the college’s values as a design-focused institution. The site also needed to adopt responsive design principles to enhance usability, especially on mobile devices. Most importantly, it had to position the college as a cohesive umbrella, bringing together its diverse activities, communities, and degree programs.
REFINING THROUGH RESEARCH
In order to involve various stakeholders throughout the website design process, we recruited volunteers to participate in input sessions over four different audiences (faculty, staff and grad students and undergrad students) providing the opportunity for these audiences to be included in the process, weigh in and identify any areas of concern. These focus groups were designed to help inform the decisions of the core project team and to aid in improving design decisions overall. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Faculty, staff, and students felt that the new website design was a very positive step forward for the College and delivers a modern and clean experience to users.
“I think it looks a lot cleaner...it’s differentiated now.”
“This looks like someone designed it more. It stands out. It’s moving beyond that kind of weird corporate university look, which is, I find that refreshing.”
AGENCY
RESPONSIBILITY
Lead designer. Contributed to the development of a new brand look and feel and crafted prototypes for key site pages. Established a reusable system of content patterns that leveraged pre-existing parent site shortcodes when applicable. Provided quality assurance and art direction during development to ensure brand and design consistency.
CLIENT FEEDBACK
“Working with Phinney Bischoff has been an absolute pleasure. Their team's professionalism and expertise were evident at every stage of the project. Not only did they deliver a beautiful, functional website that met our requirements, but they also exceeded our expectations with their innovative solutions and attention to detail.”
—Babs Pinette, CBE Director for Marketing & Communications