Case Study

Virginia State
University

A Digital Presence Worthy of Its Legacy

Brand

Virginia State University

Role

UX Lead

Context

Remote, COVID 2020

Scope

University Website

The Project

As UX Lead, I directed end-to-end research and design strategy for Virginia State University's digital transformation — a remote engagement conducted during COVID in 2020, partnering with a UX Architect to modernize one of the nation's longest-running HBCUs.

The scope was substantial: 100+ pages organized across six primary navigation trees, serving five distinct audience groups with fundamentally different needs and mental models.

The tools were Sketch, Craft, and InVision. The challenge was far larger than the toolset.

Virginia State University website redesign

The Opportunity

A legacy institution.
A dated presence.

Virginia State University holds a distinguished legacy as one of the nation's longest-running HBCUs. But in 2020, its web presence reflected a 2009-era experience — a gap that mattered more than ever in a competitive higher education landscape.

01 — The Gap

Legacy institution, dated digital reality

Higher education is a buyer's market. Prospective students evaluate institutions digitally before they ever set foot on campus. VSU was competing alongside peer HBCUs — Howard, Hampton, Spelman — with a site that couldn't tell its story or serve its community.

02 — The Mission

Modernize without erasing the identity

The goal wasn't just a visual refresh. It was rebuilding the digital ecosystem to serve a diverse audience, reinforce brand equity in a crowded landscape, and capture the spirit of campus life — all without sacrificing accessibility compliance.

Research & Personas

Five audiences.
One unified framework.

5
distinct
audience groups hypothesis-driven survey methodology

Research began with a hypothesis-driven survey methodology across all five audience groups — each with different goals, different entry points, and different definitions of success on the site.

01

Current Students

Navigating academics, registration, campus resources. Efficiency above everything.

02

Prospective Students

Evaluating VSU against peer institutions. First impression is the only impression.

03

Parents

Seeking safety, cost, and outcomes information. Trust-building at every step.

04

Alumni

Giving, reconnecting, staying engaged. Emotional connection over utility.

05

Faculty & Staff

Administrative access, departmental visibility, institutional tools.

When debates arose about navigation priorities or content hierarchy, we could return to the personas and ask: "Who are we solving for here, and what do they actually need?"

Personas as Decision Tools

The five personas weren't deliverables — they were instruments. They shaped every IA debate, every navigation tradeoff, every content priority. A persona that sits in a deck and never gets referenced again isn't a design tool. It's a document.

The Unifying Insight

Despite their differences, all five audiences shared a single primary goal: find information efficiently. That shared need became the governing principle for every architectural decision that followed.

Information Architecture

100+ pages.
Three key decisions.

A site of this scale can't be designed page by page. We moved to a template-based architecture — designing systems, not screens — and made three structural decisions that shaped everything else.

01

Mega-Navigation

VSU's content hierarchy was genuinely complex — six primary navigation trees serving audiences with completely different needs. A conventional nav would bury content or force users into deep drilling.

The mega-nav surfaced secondary destinations at the top level, reducing cognitive load without hiding complexity.

Reduced browsing depth
02

Global Utility Header

Analytics told us ~80% of homepage traffic had the same intent: find email, find directory, find portal. That intent was being sent into the main nav to compete with prospective student content.

The utility header gave returning users a dedicated lane — and freed the main nav to speak to new audiences.

80% of traffic intent, one click
03

College-Specific Navigation

Each of VSU's colleges had its own identity, its own content needs, its own audiences. A fully centralized nav would erase that. Full autonomy would fracture the experience.

College-specific navigation instances preserved university-wide consistency while giving each college room to breathe.

Consistency + autonomy

Execution

Built on evidence,
earned through process.

Usability Validation

  • Moderated usability testing across all five persona groups
  • Users praised IA clarity across every segment
  • Navigation tested intuitive without prompting
  • Only minor visual refinements required after testing
  • Architecture validated before a single page was designed

Stakeholder Navigation

  • Early sprint reviews met with silence — not agreement
  • Developed targeted discussion prompts to surface real feedback
  • Reframed decisions as tradeoffs, not recommendations
  • Built informal rapport alongside formal review cadence
  • Stakeholder alignment as critical as design quality

508 Accessibility

  • Third 508 engagement — first in higher education
  • Healthcare and financial services experiences applied to a new context
  • Campus atmosphere and emotional resonance retained within compliance
  • Accessibility treated as a design lens, not a compliance checklist
  • Decisions serving compliance almost always served clarity too

Outcomes

A dated maze, transformed.

5

Audience groups
served and validated

100+

Pages architected
via template system

508

Compliant — first
higher ed engagement

Reflection

Accessibility isn't a compliance checkbox. It's a design lens. And every time we made a decision that served compliance, it almost always served clarity too.

This project also reinforced something about how I think about scale: strategic template systems outperform page-by-page design every time. And proactive stakeholder engagement isn't a soft skill — it's as critical as the design work itself.

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