The Idea
The key to delivering a successful website for any university or school is to make sure the user can get to the information they’re looking for quickly, especially when they’re presented with a lot of content options. The focus should always be on simplicity and clear signposting as the user digs deeper into the website, leading the user to their destination efficiently and removing irrelevant information.
This make personalisation particularly important for the design and build through the introduction of a ‘content hub’ to give the user the ability to change what is served to them based on their reasons for visiting the site, whether that is by location, user type or course, the site should only display news, events, videos or social media relevant to them.
With vast amounts of content on the site, it was important that users didn’t get lost so we had the idea of creating two navigation menus, one clearly showing which page the user had come from and another showing where they needed to go next, supported with the use of breadcrumbs and an umbrella menu to jump quickly to other areas of the website.
Absolute played a key role in delivering the user interface design of the main University of Manchester website. AMBS were keen to use some of the key features in the creation of the new site, for familiarity when users navigate between the sites, but the site also needed to look like it had moved on, both aesthetically and with the functionality available from TerminalFour.