Career Center About Page Redesign

During the summer of 2014, I had the opportunity to work on a redesign of the About page for Santa Clara University’s Career Center.

The Career Center was looking for a new single-page story that led students, parents, faculty/staff, employers, alumni, and other stakeholders through four distinct pillars of the Career Center’s mission and allowed the user to find useful information in each section.

It was critical that the user could clearly understand the Career Center’s mission, goals, and resources from viewing the page, but we also wanted the user to understand the why behind the Career Center and how its mission differs from other schools’ through the emphasis on Jesuit values.

The concept of a website being a story is a useful marketing technique and a compelling visual statement that has been made easier by advancements in web technologies.

I used the four icons created to represent the Career Center’s mission as a floating navigation bar. The bar appears after you scroll to the second section and stays with you after that point. I used the opacity of the icon to show which section the user is currently viewing.

The connections between the four sections and the “thread” that connects each point creates a connected and immersive experience for users.

The main challenges I faced in this project were:

• Creating a page that fit within the University’s overarching design guidelines, while also portraying a modern vibe
• Incorporating new technologies and web practices into a buggy and outdated CMS
• Choosing which technologies and libraries to use

I originally thought the page would be parallax, but later took out the parallax functionality and went with an implementation that only used waypoints.

While the Career Center has chosen not to move forward with this vision considering the impending redesign of the entire SCU website, I appreciate the opportunity to take on such a challenging project and attempt to convey the Career Center’s spirit. I’m looking forward to assisting the Career Center in its future web projects!