Big news today! We are pleased to launch a new website reflecting our vision of the modern Faculty Information System.
We started the design process back in early 2019 with a vision centered around a clean, straightforward design that balances information architecture with ease of action. We wanted to simplify your user experience and ideally make it easy to understand who we are and what we do. And, of course, we wanted to make sure your experience was great from your mobile phone as well.
Design Process
Guiding the design ethos of this site was an approach our Creative Director, Justin Howell, dubbed “The Modern Scholar.” This design represents our continuous work to be the leading provider of thoughtful technology that modernizes aspects of the work of higher education, while better connecting scholars to each other and their institutions.
Design trends change, and it’s easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest approaches to presenting interactive content. We wanted to avoid this pitfall. So, rooted in our strong brand foundation and connecting to our agile development methodology, we worked to simplify and improve—with the user experience at the forefront. Taking a modular approach to the branding and identity allowed us to create a cleaner and more organized digital content platform.
Embracing our inner scholar, we want to quickly highlight some of the key areas we explored throughout our process.
- Design Layout: Inspired by editorial design principles, we incorporated brand changes that elevate the maturity of our design system and present content on a tightly defined grid. This included implementing more whitespace, presenting an editorial look and feel (especially on the blog), and adding more web-optimized media. These efforts help naturally move your eye through the content and ensure that the website and content is scalable to any device or screen resolution.
- Typography: We radically overhauled the typography system that we used at a brand level. We moved to a singular font called Gotham, which is a geometric sans serif font from Hoefler & Co (previously we had up to four separate fonts!). Using such a highly versatile font means that the content will be easier to read at any size.
- Color Palette: We updated our color palette to link together common actions and help users understand how to navigate the content. In addition, the enhanced contrast between various shades of primary colors helps improve the balance between content and layout.
- Framework: We created a component-based, elastic approach to our website that allows us to be flexible and responsive, creating a better foundation for us to build on our master brand and look to find ways to further create symmetry with our child brands.
- Information Architecture: We refined our approach to the organization and layout of content to encourage site exploration. Finding the content you want should be easy!
- Page Loads: We implemented a number of changes to streamline page loads, including creating a cleaner code base, leveraging modern web frameworks, introducing web optimized media, creating less redirects, and more.
- Accessibility: Understanding the importance of accessibility, we implemented a cleaner code base, worked with our outside experts to identify content best practices, and set up a system for continuous improvements. As always, we welcome your insights as we continue to evolve this.
- Security: We implemented a number of new modern web frameworks and security protocols working with our trusted web hosting provider, Pantheon.
Those are just a few of the main areas we explored and enhanced with our new site. We are design enthusiasts at heart and feel incredibly excited about our new site and look forward to the evolution of it over the years to come.
Exciting New Enhancements
Now let’s talk about some of the exciting new enhancements we’ve added with our new site:
- Focus on the Faculty Information System: We created new sections of the site to address the holistic FIS and the challenges it solves and to emphasize our offerings, including a new section to highlight our highly-rated Services team and the collaboration they give our higher education partners, whether through the Interfolio Discovery Service, Optimization Service, or during Implementation.
- Product Pages: We introduced new, streamlined product pages that provide you with information on all the modules within our Faculty Information System, whether you are looking for all the details or a quick way to get in touch with someone on our team.
- New Content Hub: One major addition was the creation of a new content hub, Interfolio Resources, which provides access to an expansive content library of case studies, white papers, and more. Additionally, now you can easily share blog content on your preferred social media platform.
- Search Engine: We have added a robust search engine to aid in discoverability and added a “related readings” section so that you can easily find topics of interest whether that is an upcoming webinar, white paper, case study, or peer institution.
Our clients are the driving force behind this new evolution of our brand, as truly they propel our company in all ways. Our mission is to provide our clients with the leading faculty-first technology, enabling each institution’s day-to-day success, now more than ever. We are a steadfast resource, and we hope our new website is just yet another way we provide essential information, content, and connections to this important community.
We invite you to dive into the website yourself, and we look forward to hearing your feedback!